THE FOOTNOTES FOR:
UNDERSTANDING POWER
THE INDISPENSABLE CHOMSKY
Edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel.
Preface
1 . For George Bush's statement, see "Bush's Remarks to the Nation on the
Terrorist Attacks," New York Times, September 1 2, 2001 , p. A4. For the quoted analysis
from the New York Times's first "Week in Review" section following the September 1 1th
attacks, see Serge Schmemann, "War Zone: What Would 'Victory' Mean?," New York
Times, September 16, 2001 , section 4, p. 1 .
Understanding Power: Preface Footnote
Chapter One
Weekend Teach-in: Opening Session
1 . On Kennedy's fraudulent "missile gap" and major escalation of the arms race,
see for example, Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, New York: Simon & Schuster,
1 983, chs. 1 6, 1 9 and 20; Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic
Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980, ch. 2.
On Reagan's fraudulent "window of vulnerability" and "military spending gap" and
the massive military buildup during his first administration, see for example, Jeff
McMahan, Reagan and the World: Imperial Policy in the New Cold War, New York:
Monthly Review, 1985, chs. 2 and 3; Franklyn Holzman, "Politics and Guesswork: C.I.A.
and D.I.A. estimates of Soviet Military Spending," International Security, Fall 1989, pp.
101-131; Franklyn Holzman, "The C.I.A. 's Military Spending Estimates: Deceit and Its
Costs," Challenge, May/June 1992, pp. 28-39; Report of the President's Commission on
Strategic Forces, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1983, especially
pp. 7-8, 1 7, and Brent Scowcroft, "Final Report of the President's Commission on
Strategic Forces," Atlantic Community Quarterly, Vol. 22, Spring 1984, pp. 14-22 (the
administration's own Scowcroft Commission's rejection of the "window of vulnerability"
story). See also chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 3 and 4.
On Kennedy in Latin America, see for example, Charles Maechling, Jr. [leading
U.S. counterinsurgency planner from 1961 to 1966], "The Murderous Mind of the Latin
American Military," Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1982, part II, p. 1 1 (discussing how
the Kennedy administration shifted the mission of the Latin American military from
"hemispheric defense" [i.e. defense against external enemies] to "internal security" [i.e.
control of domestic dissidence] after the Cuban Revolution and the failed U.S.-
sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion attempt against Cuba, and thereby changed the U.S.
position in the region from toleration "of the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American
military" to "direct complicity . . . [in] the methods of Heinrich Himmler's extermination
squads"); Stephen Rabe, "Controlling Revolutions: Latin America, the Alliance for
Progress, and Cold War Anti-Communism," in Thomas Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest
for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963, New York: Oxford University Press,
1989, pp. 105-122; Jenny Pearce, Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in Central America
and the Caribbean, London: Latin America Bureau, 1982, Part II; A.J. Langguth, Hidden
Terrors, New York: Pantheon, 1 978, especially pp. 99, 115-116 (detailed description of
how Kennedy liberals engineered the overthrow of Brazilian democracy in 1964 and
replaced it with the subfascist regime that ruled for decades, after the Brazilian President
Goulart had refused Robert Kennedy's admonition to end his flirtation with "romantic left-
wing causes"). See also, David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're On Our Side: The
United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965, Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1999, ch. 6.
Chomsky adds that military-controlled states dedicated to "internal security"
constituted one of the two major legacies of the Kennedy Administration to Latin
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 1
America. The other was the Alliance for Progress, a 1 961 program of U.S. aid to Latin
America, which was a statistical success but a social catastrophe (apart from foreign
investors and domestic elites). On the devastating effects of the Alliance for Progress,
see for example, Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central
America, New York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), ch. 3;
Walter LaFeber, "The Alliances in Retrospect," in Andrew Maguire and Janet W. Brown,
eds., Bordering on Trouble: Resources and Politics in Latin America, Bethesda, MD:
Adler & Adler, 1986, pp. 337-388; Simon Hanson, Five Years of the Alliance for
Progress, Washington: Inter-American Affairs, 1967. And see generally, Robert
Williams, Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1 986.
On Reagan in Latin America, see footnote 13 of this chapter; chapter 2 of U.P. and
its footnote 1 5; chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnotes 3 and 10; and chapter 5 of U.P. and its
footnote 48.
2. On U.S. terrorism against Cuba, see the text following this footnote in U.P., and
footnote 21 of this chapter; and chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 29.
3. On Kennedy's authorization of attacks against Vietnam beginning in late 1 961 ,
see The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States
Decisionmaking on Vietnam, Senator Gravel Edition, Boston: Beacon, 1972, Vol. II, pp.
656-658, 677; William Conrad Gibbons, ed., The U.S. Government and the Vietnam
War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part II (1 961 -1 964), Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1 986, pp. 70-71 . For early press coverage of these attacks ~
which elicited little protest in the U.S. for several years -- see for example, A.P., "U.S.
Pilots Aiding Combat In Vietnam," New York Times, March 10, 1962, p. A8.
4. On public opposition to U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1 980s, see
for example, Edward Walsh, "Reagan Gets First Public Opinion Backlash," Washington
Post, March 27, 1 981 , p. A9 (mail to the White House was reported to be "running 1 to 1
against the administration's new emphasis on military aid and advisers" to El Salvador,
and the strong public opposition was confirmed in polls); Cynthia Arnson, El Salvador: A
Revolution Confronts the United States, Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1982,
p. 73 (less than 2 percent of the U.S. public favored military intervention in El Salvador,
and 80 percent opposed sending advisers, according to March 1981 Gallup polls);
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New
York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), ch. 5.
The Reagan administration was so concerned about the public's attitudes towards
its policies that it developed plans to suspend the Constitution and impose martial law in
the event of "national crises," such as "violent and widespread internal dissent or
national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad." On these plans, see for example,
Alfonso Chardy, "Reagan advisers ran 'secret' government," Miami Herald, July 5, 1987,
p. 1 A (reporting based on internal government documents that in such an event the
administration intended to turn control of the United States over to the national crisis-
management unit F.E.M.A., an agency directed by Louis Guiffrida, a close associate of
Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese, who while at Army War College in 1 970
wrote a memorandum recommending the internment of at least 21 million "American
Negroes" in "assemble-centers or relocation camps" in the event of an uprising by black
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 2
militants); Dave Lindorff, "Oliver's Martial Plan," Village Voice, July 21 , 1987, p. 15;
Christopher Hitchens, "The adoration of the mad guy," New Statesman (U.K.), July 1 7,
1987, p. 20.
For an example of how these revelations were treated by Congress, see Taking the
Stand: The Testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, New York: Pocket Books,
1987. An excerpt (p. 643):
REP. BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. [National Security
Council], were you not assigned at one time to work on plans for the continuity of
government in the event of a major disaster?
MR. SULLIVAN [NORTH'S LAWYER]: Mr. Chairman? (Gavel sounds.)
CHAIRMAN INOUYE: I believe the question touches upon a highly sensitive and
classified area. So may I request that you not touch upon that, sir?
REP. BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in
Miami papers and several others that there had been a plan developed by that same
agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency that would suspend the
American Constitution, and I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was
the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was, but I wanted --
Chairman INOUYE: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be
touched upon at this stage? If we wish to get into this I'm certain arrangements can
be made for an Executive Session.
On the Reagan administration's move towards intervention in Central America, see
for example its so-called "White Paper" on El Salvador, Communist Interference in El
Salvador: Documents Demonstrating Communist Support of the Salvadoran Insurgency,
Special Report No. 80, Washington: United States Department of State, Bureau of
Public Affairs, February 23, 1 981 . On the subsequent exposure of the basis for the
"White Paper" as fraudulent, see for example, Robert G. Kaiser, "White Paper on El
Salvador Is Faulty," Washington Post, June 9, 1 981 , p. A1 ; Robert G. Kaiser, "The Man
Behind the White Paper and the Unfolding of the Story," Washington Post, June 9, 1981 ,
p. A14; James Petras, "White Paper On The White Paper," Nation, March 28, 1981 , pp.
353f; Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador, New York:
Times Books, 1984, ch. 13; Jonathan Kwitney, Endless Enemies: The Making of an
Unfriendly World, New York: Congdon & Weed, 1 984, pp. 359-374.
5. On the Office of Public Diplomacy, see for example, Alfonso Chardy, "N.S.C.
supervised office to influence opinion," Miami Herald, July 19, 1987, p. 18A ('"If you look
at it as a whole, the Office of Public Diplomacy was carrying out a huge psychological
operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in denied or enemy
territory,' a senior U.S. official familiar with the effort said"); Robert Parry and Peter
Kornbluh, "Reagan's Pro-Contra Propaganda Machine," Washington Post, September 4,
1988, p. C1 ("the campaign came to resemble the sort of covert political operation the
OI.A. runs against hostile forces overseas but is outlawed from conducting at home");
Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, "Iran-Contra's Untold Story," Foreign Policy, Fall
1988, pp. 3-30; Joanne Omang, "The People Who Sell Foreign Policies," Washington
Post, October 15, 1985, p. A21 ; Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable
Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1 990, pp.
131-141 ; Alfonso Chardy, "Secrets leaked to harm Nicaragua, sources say," Miami
Herald, October 13, 1986, p. 12A (reporting that a disinformation campaign named
"Project Truth," designed to set the agenda for debate over Nicaragua, apparently was
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 3
activated in a secret National Security Directive titled "Management of Public Diplomacy
Relative to National Security," dated January 4, 1983); Staff Report, State Department
and Intelligence Community Involvement in Domestic Activities Related to the
Iran/Contra Affair, Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1992, pp. 3-4 (the Comptroller
General of the General Accounting Office condemned the Office of Public Diplomacy's
activities as illegal).
President Wilson's propaganda office during the First World War was the
"Committee on Public Information," also known as the "Creel Commission."
6. On Carter military spending projections, see for example, Robert Komer [former
Under-Secretary of Defense], "What 'Decade of Neglect'?," International Security, Fall
1 985, pp. 70-83. An excerpt (pp. 73, 76, 78-79):
Actual defense outlays went up in every Carter year, in strong contrast to the
declines characteristic of every Nixon-Ford year from F.Y. 1969 through F.Y. 1976
[with a] substantial increase in F.Y. 1981 [i.e. under Carter]. ... As it turns out, the
F.Y. 1982-1985 outlays actually approved by Congress average slightly lower than
the Carter projections. . . . Almost every Reagan equipment program to date was
begun under Carter, or even before, with the notable exception of S.D.I, [i.e. "Star
Wars"]. . . . Reagan rhetoric tended to obscure the fact that Reagan's program was
mostly an acceleration of a buildup already begun under Carter.
Bernard Weinraub, "White House Plans Rise to $124 Billion in Military Budget," New
York Times, November 1 6, 1 978, p. A1 . An excerpt:
Administration sources said defense officials were especially gratified because the
President [Carter] has decided to cut about $15 billion out of the normal growth of a
range of social and domestic programs . . . [while raising military spending by some
$1 2 billion]. Officials indicated that the "guns and butter" argument waged within the
Administration had now been settled by Mr. Carter in favor of the Defense
Department.
See also, Thomas B. Cochran et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume I: U.S.
Nuclear Forces and Capabilities, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger/Harper & Row, 1984, p. 13;
Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon
to Reagan, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1985 (revised edition 1994), pp. 865-882.
On Reagan's military budget, see footnote 1 of this chapter.
7. On public opposition to Reagan's policies and popular attitudes remaining
stubbornly social-democratic in important respects since the New Deal years, see for
example, Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats
and the Future of American Politics, New York: Hill and Wang, 1986 (tracing the myth of
a "right turn" in public attitudes in the U.S., and discussing general popular opposition to
Reagan's policies); Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party
Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1 995, chs. 5, 6, and Postscript (extending Right Turn's analysis and
confirming its conclusions through 1 994); Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The
Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1 992, chs. 3 and 4, at pp. 1 69-1 70 (after reviewing an
enormous number of polls over time, the authors conclude: "Ferguson and Rogers [in
Right Turn] are correct, therefore, in arguing that the policy right turn of the Reagan years
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 4
cannot be accounted for as a response to public demands"); Stanley Kelley, Jr.,
"Democracy and the New Deal Party System," in Amy Guttman, ed., Democracy and the
Welfare State, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 185-205 (presenting poll
results that demonstrate consistent public support for New Deal-type programs from
1 952 to 1 984, with only a brief dip in 1 980); Vicente Navarro, "The 1 984 Election and the
New Deal: An Alternative Interpretation (2 parts)," Social Policy, Spring 1985, pp. 3-10
(reporting that polls during the 1 980s regularly indicated that the public would support a
tax increase devoted to New Deal and Great Society programs; support for equal or
greater social expenditures was about 80 percent in 1 984, and a greater number viewed
social welfare programs favorably in 1 984 than in 1 980; 95 percent of the public
opposed cuts in Social Security, people preferred cuts in military spending to cuts in
health programs by about 2 to 1 , they supported the Clean Air Act by 7 to 1 , opposed
cuts in Medicare or Medicaid by well over 3 to 1 , preferred defense spending cuts over
cuts in these medical aid programs by 3 or 4 to 1 , and opposed a ban on abortions by
over 2 to 1 ; three-fourths of the population supported government regulations to protect
worker health and safety, and similar levels supported protection of consumer interests
and other social expenditures, including help for the elderly, the poor, and the needy);
Mark N. Vamos, ed., "Portrait of a Skeptical Public," Business Week, November 20,
1995, p. 138 (reprinting a Business LVee/</Harris poll on popular attitudes towards the
role of government, and concluding based upon its findings: "the public agrees more
with the Democratic notion of government as protector of society's most vulnerable than
with the Republican vision of Washington as arm's-length guarantor of an 'opportunity
society'"). See also footnote 50 of chapter 1 of U.P.
On Reagan's electoral "mandate," see for example, Joshua Cohen and Joel
Rogers, On Democracy: Toward a Transformation of American Society, New York:
Penguin, 1983. An excerpt (p. 33):
On election day in 1 980, the 53.2 percent turnout was the third lowest in American
history, higher only than the 1920 and 1924 elections that followed the abrupt swelling
of the eligibility rolls resulting from the enfranchisement of women. In winning the
victory that continues to be labeled a "mandate" and a "landslide" by the national
press, Ronald Reagan gained a smaller percentage of the eligible electorate than did
Wendell Willkie in his decisive 1940 loss to Roosevelt.
See also, E.J. Dionne Jr., "Bush Names Baker As Secretary of State, Hails 40-State
Support," New York Times, November 10, 1988, p. A1 ("estimates put the turnout [in the
1 988 Presidential election] at from 49 to 50 percent of eligible voters. That would make
it the lowest since 1 924"). On public attitudes and the 1 994 Congressional elections,
see the text of chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 1 8.
For a poll on how past Presidents are remembered, see Adam Pertman, "Carter
makes a triumphant return," Boston Globe, July 15, 1992, p. 19 (among ex-Presidents,
Carter is well in the lead in popularity ratings at 74 percent, followed by the virtually
unknown Ford at 68 percent, with Reagan at 58 percent, barely above Nixon at 54
percent).
8. On the Congressional origins of U.S. human rights programs, see for example,
Lars Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1 981 , especially ch. 2; Lars Schoultz, "U.S. Foreign Policy
and Human Rights Violations in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Aid
Distributions," Comparative Politics, January 1981 , p. 155 ("Over the open and intense
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 5
opposition of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, since 1 973 Congress has
added human rights clauses to virtually all U.S. foreign assistance legislation"). See
also, Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda,
Boston: South End, 1 982, especially p. 244 n.1 0.
Chomsky adds that it is a real tribute to the propaganda system that the press can
still refer to a "human rights campaign" during the Carter administration, a Presidency
which sponsored and supported the Somoza family in Nicaragua, the Shah of Iran,
Marcos in the Philippines, Park in South Korea, Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia,
Mobutu in Zaire, the Brazilian generals, and their many confederates in repression and
violence (The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism - The Political
Economy of Human Rights: Volume 1, 1979, Boston: South End, pp. 370 n.80, 40).
9. On continued funding of Guatemala despite Congressional legislation, see for
example, Lars Schoultz, "Guatemala: Social Change and Political Conflict," in Martin
Diskin, ed., Trouble in our Backyard: Central America and the United States in the
Eighties, New York: Pantheon, 1983, pp. 187-191 and Tables pp. 188-189 (annual U.S.
military aid deliveries to Guatemala for 1 977 to 1 980 continued at between 94 percent in
1 979 and 61 percent in 1 980 of the 1 976 level, with economic aid continuing as well);
Allan Nairn, "The Guatemala Connection: While Congress Slept, U.S. Arms Merchants
Delivered the Goods," Progressive, May 1986, pp. 20-23 (and see the exchange of
letters with a State Department official, at pp. 6-8 of the September issue).
1 0. On the 42-page document outlining the mercenary-state network, see for
example, Stephen Engelberg, "Document in North Trial Suggests Stronger Bush Role in
Contra Aid," New York Times, April 7, 1 989, pp. A1 , A1 1 (summarizing and quoting
excerpts from the 42-page document); Joe Pichirallo, "Bush Joined Efforts by Reagan,
Aides To Solicit Arms for Contras During Ban," Washington Post, April 7, 1 989, p. A1 .
On the rise of U.S. mercenary states and clandestine foreign policy activities in the
1980s, see for example, Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The
Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era,
Boston: South End, 1987.
On U.S. control over the World Anti-Communist League, a collection of Nazis,
fanatic anti-Semites, death squad assassins, torturers and killers from around the world,
see Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of
How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World
Anti-Communist League, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.
1 1 . On Israel as a U.S. mercenary state, see for example, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi,
The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why, New York: Pantheon, 1 987; Israel
Shahak, Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression, Belmont, MA: Association of
Arab-American University Graduates, 1982; Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy: South
Africa and Central America, Boston: South End, 1987; Bishara Bahbah, Israel and Latin
America: The Military Connection, New York: St. Martin's, 1 986. See also, "Carving a
big slice of world arms sales," Business Week, December 8, 1980, p. 43. An excerpt:
Although excluded from the lucrative Middle East [armaments] market, Israel has
made headway in other parts of the globe ~ notably Latin America, the Far East, and
Africa. The Latin American market has developed rapidly in recent years following
the Carter Administration's decision to prohibit U.S. arms sales to many right-wing
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 6
regimes. Israel has become a leading supplier to such countries as Argentina, Chile,
Bolivia, Colombia, and Guatemala. Other major Israeli clients include South Africa,
Taiwan, Nigeria, Thailand, and Singapore.
And see footnote 1 6 of this chapter.
1 2. For Arce's interviews in Mexico, see for example, Ruben Montedonico,
"Militarily and Morally the Contras Are Finished: Horacio Arce," Honduras Update
(Cambridge, MA; Honduras Information Center), November/December 1988, pp. 13-16
(from El Dfa of Mexico City, November 6 and 7, 1 988); Marcio Vargas, "This War Is Lost.
It Is Over' -- Exclusive Interview With Top Contra Defector, Comandante Mercenary"
Central America Information Bulletin (Managua; Agencia Nueva Nicaragua), No. 40,
December 21,1 988, pp. 1 , 4-5. Arce, whose nom de guerre as a contra leader was
"Mercenario," explained:
We attack a lot of schools, health centers, and those sorts of things. We have tried
to make it so that the Nicaraguan government cannot provide social services for the
peasants, cannot develop its project . . . that's the idea.
1 3. On the death toll in Guatemala in the 1 980s, see Report of the Commission for
Historical Clarification (C.E.H.), Guatemala: Memory of Silence, 1999 (quotations are
from paragraphs 1 , 2, 15 and 82). This report of an international human rights
investigatory panel administered by the United Nations concludes that "the number of
persons killed or disappeared as a result of the fratricidal confrontation reached a total of
over 200,000" in Guatemala since 1 962, with 91 percent of these violations occurring
between 1 978 and 1 984. The Commission found that "state forces and related
paramilitary groups were responsible for 93% of the violations documented by the
C.E.H., including 92% of the arbitrary executions and 91% of forced disappearances."
For additional sources, see for example, Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala:
Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991 , p. 149; Piero
Gleijeses, "The Reagan Doctrine and Latin America," Current History, December 1986,
pp. 401 f at p. 435; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central
America, New York: Norton, 1993 (revised and expanded edition). An excerpt (p. 362):
[T]he years from 1979 to 1991 turned out to be the bloodiest, most violent, and most
destructive era in Central America's post-1820 history. The number of dead and
"disappeared" varies according to different sources. The minimum is 200,000
(40,000 in Nicaragua, 75,000 in El Salvador, 75,000 in Guatemala, 10,000 in
Honduras and the frontier fighting in Costa Rica), but this is only an estimate. Millions
have been displaced or made refugees. If a similar catastrophe struck the United
States in proportion, 2.5 million North Americans would die and 10 to 20 million would
be driven from their homes.
See also, Amnesty International, Guatemala: A Government Program of Political
Murder, London: Amnesty International, February 1981 . An excerpt (pp. 5-6):
The bodies of the victims have been found piled up in ravines, dumped at
roadsides or buried in mass graves. Thousands bore the scars of torture, and death
had come to most by strangling with a garrotte, by being suffocated in rubber hoods
or by being shot in the head. . . .
By far the majority of victims were chosen after they had become associated ~ or
were thought to be associated - with social, religious, community or labor
organizations, or after they had been in contact with organizers of national political
parties. In other words, Amnesty International's evidence is that the targets for
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 7
extreme governmental violence tend to be selected from grass roots organizations
outside official control.
And see footnote 54 of chapter 8 of U.P.
14. For the McNamara-Bundy intercommunication, see Memorandum for the
Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, "Study of U.S. Policy
Toward Latin American Military Forces," Secretary of Defense, June 1 1 , 1965 (available
in the Lyndon Baines Johnson library).
For similar statements in secret but now declassified U.S. government documents,
see footnote 52 of chapter 2 of U.P.
On U.S. training of Latin American military leaders, see for example, Jan Knippers
Black, United States Penetration of Brazil, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1977, pp. 220-221, 170-171 (over 200,000 Latin American military personnel had
been trained in the U.S. by the late 1 970s, and U.S. military training has purposefully
built a network of personal relationships between United States and Latin American
military cadres); Joanne Omang, "Latin American Left, Right Say U.S. Militarized
Continent," Washington Post, April 11,1 977, p. A1 6 (over 30,000 Latin American officers
had been trained in the U.S. "School for the Americas" alone by the 1 970s, and the
training of Latin American military personnel in U.S. bases and training schools has
placed great weight on ideological conditioning and has "steeped young Latin officers in
the early 1 950s anti-Communist dogma that subversive infiltrators could be anywhere");
Jeffrey Stein, "Fort Lesley J. McNair: Grad School For Juntas," Nation, May 21 , 1 977, pp.
621-624 (on the Inter-American Defense College).
1 5. On the U.S. overthrow of the Chilean government, see for example, U.S.
Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence
Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim Report,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975, section IMF, especially p. 231 n.2.
This report explains that the White House and C.I.A. pursued a "two track" policy in
Chile. The hard line called for a military coup, which was finally achieved. The soft line
-- which included a White House directive to "make the economy scream" -- was
explained by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry, a Kennedy liberal, who stated: "not a nut
or bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we
shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation
and poverty, a policy designed for a long time to come to accelerate the hard features of
a Communist society in Chile." Chomsky stresses {Year 501: The Conquest Continues,
Boston: South End, 1 993, p. 36):
[E]ven if the hard line did not succeed in introducing fascist killers to exterminate the
virus, the vision of "utmost deprivation" [in Chile] would suffice to keep the rot from
spreading, and ultimately demoralize the patient itself. And crucially, it would provide
ample grist for the mill of the cultural managers, who can produce cries of anguish at
"the hard features of a Communist society," pouring scorn on those "apologists" who
describe what is happening.
On the coup itself, see for example, James Petras and Morris Morley, The United
States and Chile: Imperialism and the Overthrow of the Allende Government, New York:
Monthly Review, 1975; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions
Since World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, ch. 34; John Gittings, ed.,
The Lessons of Chile: The Chilean Coup and the Future of Socialism, Nottingham, U.K.:
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 8
Spokesman, 1 975 (providing first-hand accounts of the effect of the coup on socialist
activists in Chile); Fred Landis, "How 20 Chileans Overthrew Allende for the C.I.A.,"
Inquiry, February 1 9, 1 979, pp. 1 6-20 (on the role of the Institute for General Studies, a
C.I.A.-funded think-tank that ran vast anti-Allende propaganda operations for the C.I.A.).
See also footnote 1 7 of this chapter.
1 6. Chomsky points out that the principal weakness of the "October Surprise"
theory is that the arms flow to Iran began during the Carter administration ~ before the
1 980 election -- whereas under the "October Surprise" theory the quid pro quo of
delaying release of the hostages was that the Reaganites would secretly begin to
provide arms to Iran after they were elected. With respect to the "arms for hostages"
theory concerning the hostages taken in 1 985, reams of documentation prove that there
was an arms flow to Iran prior to the earliest period that was examined by the
Congressional Hearings and the Tower Commission. In addition, many express
statements by insiders explain that their goal was, in fact, to bring about a military coup
in Iran.
For some of the evidence supporting these points, see for example, David Nyhan,
"Israel plan was aimed at toppling Khomeini," Boston Globe, October 21 , 1 982, p. 1
(Israeli Ambassador Moshe Arens stated in an interview that Israel had provided arms to
the Khomeini regime "in coordination with the U.S. government ... at almost the highest
of levels." "The objective," Arens said, "was to see if we could not find some areas of
contact with the Iranian military, to bring down the Khomeini regime"); Robert Levey,
"U.S. denies Arens' claim," Boston Globe, October 22, 1 982, p. 1 (the U.S. State
Department's immediate denial of Arens's account); David Nyhan, "Israeli disputes
Globe story," Boston Globe, October 23, 1982, p. 4 (Arens's attempt to correct his story
the next day, maintaining that the arms deal with Iran was discussed in advance with
U.S. officials but saying that not enough equipment was sent to topple the Khomeini
regime, although he reaffirmed that "the purpose was to make contact with some military
officers who some day might be in a position of power in Iran"); Transcript of Panorama,
B.B.C.-1 T.V. (U.K.) at 8:1 p.m., February 1 , 1 982. After David Kimche, head of Israel's
Foreign Office and former director of its intelligence agency M.O.S.S.A.D., discussed
Israel's sending American armaments to Iran from 1980, he stated:
QUESTION: So that if Israel wishes to see a strong Iranian army it would be in
Israel's interests for America to supply those spare parts?
KlMCHE: Well, I don't want to reach the obvious conclusion here. I think I made
our position plain. We think that the Iranian army should be strong, yes.
QUESTION: So, really, an army take-over is what you're saying?
KlMCHE: Possibly, yes.
Former C.I.A. Director and U.S. Ambassador to Iran Richard Helms then elaborated:
One doesn't mount coups to change governments or influence events without
specific assets in the form of guns, people, groups desirous of helping, people who
are prepared to take risk, all of these things, so that this is not a theoretical matter, it's
a very practical matter and I wouldn't have any doubt that the United States is trying
to find out what assets it can bring to bear.
On the timing of the arms sales, see for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski [Carter's
National Security Advisor], Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security
Adviser, 1977-1981, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983, p. 504 (reporting that the
Carter administration had learned in 1980 of secret Israeli shipments of U.S. armaments
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 9
to Iran); Dan Fisher, "Israel-Iran Arms Flow Reportedly Began In 79," Los Angeles
Times, November 22, 1 986, p. 1 . An excerpt:
Israeli arms dealers, with the acquiescence of the government, have maintained a
nearly continuous supply of weaponry to Iran since 1979, including at least seven
shiploads dispatched independently of a U.S.-sponsored Iranian arms program over
the last 14 months, according to informed sources [in Israel]. . . .
Pleased initially that revelation of the Reagan program [of clandestine weapons
shipments to Iran] made Israel appear as a loyal strategic ally aiding an effort to free
U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian elements in Lebanon, Israeli policy-makers have
watched with growing discomfort as Washington news reports seem increasingly to
depict Jerusalem as a villain in the affair. . . . "The State of Israel has never sold
American arms or weapons containing American components without having
received authorization from the U.S.," Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin told an Israeli
Army Radio interviewer last week. . . . [T]hen-lsraeli Defense Minister . . . [Ariel]
Sharon argued that arms shipments would help keep channels open to "moderate" or
"pragmatic" elements in Iran, particularly in the military, who would one day overthrow
or at least inherit the reins of power from Khomeini.
"Carving a big slice of world arms sales," Business Week, December 8, 1 980, p. 43
(according to Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Tsippori, "Iran, once a big
customer for Israeli arms under the Shah, [is] now purchasing Israeli weapons again
through European intermediaries"); John Walcott and Jane Mayer, "Israel Said to Have
Sold Weapons to Iran Since 1981 With Tacit Approval of the Reagan Administration,"
Wall Street Journal, November 28, 1986, p. 3 (noting that U.S. authorization of Israeli
arms sales to be compensated by the U.S. goes back to 1 981 , with the knowledge of
Haig, Weinberger, Shultz, Baker, and others; "Officials said both Israel and the U.S.
hoped that the arms sales would curry favor with the military people in Iran, the so-called
moderates, helping to position these men to take over if Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
died or there was a coup"); General Robert E. Huyser, Mission to Tehran, New York:
Harper & Row, 1 986 (Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's
endorsement of Huyser's book about his dispatch to Iran to organize the Iranian military
to carry out a coup states that Brzezinski remains convinced that only "procrastination
and bureaucratic sabotage prevented the U.S.-sponsored military coup" he advocated
and "that might have saved Iran from Khomeini" and "the masses").
See also, Samuel Segev, The Iranian Triangle: The Untold Story of Israel's Role in
the Iran-Contra Affair, New York: Free Press, 1 988; Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott,
and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in
the Reagan Era, Boston: South End, 1987, chs. 7 and 8; Scott Armstrong et al., The
Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to
Iran and the Contras, New York: Warner, 1 987, pp. 7-8.
1 7. For unclassified U.S. military aid figures during the Allende years, see for
example, Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, Staff Report of the Select Committee to
Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, U.S. Senate,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 18, 1975, pp. 32-38 (with
tables on military assistance, military sales, and training of Chilean military personnel in
Panama, based on "unclassified" figures from the Defense Department). An excerpt (p.
37; emphasis in original):
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 10
[Military assistance was not cut off at the time of Allende's confirmation. Military
sales jumped sharply from 1972 to 1973 and even more sharply from 1973 to 1974
after the coup. Training of Chilean military personnel in Panama also rose during the
Allende years . . . [increasing the number of trainees from 1969 to 1973 by 150
percent].
18. On C.I.A. involvement in overthrowing Sukarno in Indonesia, see for example,
Peter Dale Scott, "The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967," Pacific
Affairs, Summer 1985, pp. 239-264 (study documenting the C.I.A.'s role); Ralph
McGehee [ex-C.I.A. officer], "The C.I.A. and The White Paper On El Salvador," Nation,
April 1 1 , 1981 , p. 423f (this article was censored by the C.I.A. under a clause in the
author's contract, and was published with deletions noted; the author reports that he is
familiar with a highly classified C.I.A. report on the Agency's role in provoking the
destruction of the P.K.I., the Indonesian Communist Party, and he attributes the slaughter
to the "C.I.A. [one word deleted] operation"); Kathy Kadane, "Ex-agents say C.I.A.
compiled death lists for Indonesians," San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990, p. A1
("Silent for a quarter century, former high-ranking U.S. diplomats and C.I.A. officials
described in lengthy interviews how they aided Indonesian army leader Suharto -- now
president of Indonesia -- in his attack on the P.K.I. [Indonesian Communist Party]");
Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1980,
New York: Pantheon, 1 988, pp. 1 73-1 85 (concise summary of the events leading up to
the massacre). An excerpt (p. 177 n."*"):
U.S. documents for the three months preceding September 30, 1965, and dealing
with the convoluted background and intrigues, much less the embassy's and the
C.I.A.'s roles, have been withheld from public scrutiny. Given the detailed materials
available before and after July-September 1965, one can only assume that the
release of these papers would embarrass the U.S. government.
During Congressional testimony, Pentagon official Paul Warnke, a reputed dove,
acknowledged the purpose of U.S. military aid to Indonesia before the 1 965 coup. See
Foreign Assistance Act of 1968 Hearings, Hearings before the Committee on Foreign
Affairs, House of Representatives, 90th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1 968, p. 706:
[CONNECTICUT SENATOR JOHN] MONAGAN: Speaking of military assistance
programs, I think of one that is in Indonesia, where at least in the latter days the
purpose for which it was maintained was not to support an existing [i.e. the Sukarno]
regime. In fact, we were opposed, eventually and increasingly, to the then existing
regime. It was to preserve a liaison of sorts with the military of the country which in
effect turned out to be one of the conclusive elements in the overthrow of that regime.
WARNKE: That is correct, sir.
On the subsequent massacre in Indonesia, and for more on the U.S. involvement,
see footnote 23 of chapter 2 of U.P.
On U.S. government involvement in another "classic operation," overthrowing the
democratic Goulart government in Brazil in 1964, see for example, A.J. Langguth,
Hidden Terrors, New York: Pantheon, 1978, pp. 38-1 16; Jan Knippers Black, United
States Penetration of Brazil, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977;
Phyllis Parker, Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964, Austin: University of Texas Press,
1979; Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961-1969,
Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990. See also, Thomas Skidmore, The Politics
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 1 1
of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-85, New York: Oxford University Press, 1 988
(comprehensive scholarly study of the post-coup period).
19. On the C.I.A. coup in Iran, see for example, William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S.
Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage,
1995, ch. 9; Bill A. James, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian
Relations, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, ch. 2; Kermit Roosevelt,
Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1 979 (first-
person account of the coup by a former C.I.A. officer; this book was recalled from stores
by its publisher McGraw-Hill in 1979 under pressure from British Petroleum Company,
the successor corporation to the petroleum entity which Roosevelt implicated in the
coup). See also, William A. Dorman and Mansour Farhang, The U.S. Press and Iran:
Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1 987, ch. 2 (on the distorted U.S. press coverage of the coup, and of Iran
generally). On the recall of Roosevelt's book, see Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media
Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997, p. 39.
20. On the C.I.A. coup in Guatemala, see for example, Stephen Schlesinger and
Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1999 (expanded edition); Richard H. Immerman, The C.I.A. in
Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982;
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New
York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), pp. 1 13-127; Stephen
Schlesinger, "How Dulles Worked the Coup d'Etat," Nation, October 28, 1978, p. 425
(based upon more than 1 ,000 pages of State Department documents from 1 953 and
1954, released to Schlesinger under the Freedom of Information Act; concluding that the
coup "was conceived of and run at the highest levels of the American government in
closest cahoots with the United Fruit Company and under the overall direction of
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, backed by President Eisenhower").
For a statement of the U.S.'s reasons for the coup, see Piero Gleijeses, Shattered
Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1 991 , p. 365. This study quotes a State Department official's warning
prior to the coup that "Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of
Honduras and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its
broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against
the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of
Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail."
21 . On the scale, illegality and activities of Operation MONGOOSE, see for
example, Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1 989 edition),
Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989. An excerpt (p. 32 and n.53):
[A] secret Special Group . . . [was] established in November 1 961 to conduct covert
operations against Cuba under the code-name "Mongoose." Attorney General
Kennedy was a driving force in this covert action program. A Washington
headquarters group had been set up under General Lansdale and a C.I.A. "Task
Force W" in Florida under William K. Harvey, both veteran covert action managers.
The operation came to involve 400 Americans, about 2,000 Cubans, a private navy of
fast boats, and an annual budget of about $50 million. Task Force W carried out a
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 12
wide range of activities, initially mostly against Cuban ships and aircraft outside Cuba
(and non-Cuban ships engaged in the Cuba trade), such as contaminating sugar
shipments out of Cuba and tampering with industrial imports into the country. A new
phase, calling for more raids into Cuba, opened in September. ... A Miami C.I.A.
station was also established, in probable violation of the law banning C.I.A.
operations in the United States, to say nothing of organizing activities that
contravened the Neutrality Act.
U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to
Intelligence Activities, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Final Report,
94th Congress, 2nd Session, Books II, III, and VI (Report No. 94-755), Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1976; Warren Hinckle and William Turner, The Fish is Red:
The Story of The Secret War Against Castro, New York: Harper & Row, 1 981 , ch. 4;
Morris H. Morley, Imperial State and Revolution: The United States and Cuba, 1952-
1986, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 148-154; Edward S. Herman,
The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda, Boston: South End, 1982,
ch. 2.
One of the commandos who participated in paramilitary operations against Cuba
under the command of William "Rip" Robertson describes them as follows (quoted in
Taylor Branch and George Crile III, "The Kennedy Vendetta: How the C.I.A. waged a
silent war against Cuba," Harper's, August 1975, pp. 49-63):
After the Bay of Pigs is when the great heroic deeds of Rip really began. I was
on one of his teams, but he controlled many teams and many operations. . . . Our
team made more than seven big war missions. Some of them were huge: the attacks
on the Texaco refinery, the Russian ships in Oriente Province, a big lumberyard, the
Patrice Lumumba sulfuric acid plant at Santa Lucia, and the diesel plant at Casilda.
But they never let us fight as much as we wanted to, and most of the operations were
infiltrations and weapons drops.
We would go on missions to Cuba almost every week. When we didn't go, Rip
would feel sick and get very mad. He was always blowing off his steam, but then he
would call us his boys, and he would hug us and hit us in the stomach. He was
always trying to crank us up for the missions. Once he told me, "I'll give you $50 if
you bring me back an ear." I brought him two, and he laughed and said, "You're
crazy," but he paid me $100, and he took us to his home for a turkey dinner. Rip was
a patriot, an American patriot. Really, I think he was a fanatic. He'd fight anything
that came against democracy. ... At the end of December, 1961, [commando
Ramon] Orozco went on a ten-day operation with a seven-man team. The
commandos blew up a railroad bridge and watched a train run off the ruptured tracks,
then they burned down a sugar warehouse.
See also, U.P.I., "C.I.A. reportedly tried to dry up Cuban crop," Boston Globe, June 27,
1976, p. 3 (reporting the allegation by former Pentagon researcher Lowell Ponte that the
C.I.A. and the Pentagon seeded clouds "to try to dry up the Cuban sugar crop in 1 969
and 1 970"; in the next day's issue the report is denied by the Pentagon); Drew
Fetherston and John Cummings, "Canadian Says U.S. Paid Him $5,000 to Infect Cuban
Poultry," Washington Post, March 21 , 1 977, p. A1 8 ("The major details of the Canadian's
story [i.e. in the title] have been confirmed by sources within and outside the American
intelligence community"); Drew Fethersten and John Cummings, "C.I.A. tied to Cuba's
'71 pig fever outbreak," Boston Globe, January 9, 1 977, p. 1 . An excerpt:
With at least the tacit backing of Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives
linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1 971 .
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 13
Six weeks later an outbreak of the disease forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to
prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.
A U.S. intelligence source said in an interview that he was given the virus in a
sealed, unmarked container at an Army base and C.I.A. training ground in the
Panama Canal Zone with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group. The
1971 outbreak was the first and only time the disease has hit the Western
Hemisphere. It was labeled the "most alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations
Food and Agricultural Organization. African swine fever is a highly contagious and
usually lethal viral disease that infects only pigs and, unlike swine flu, cannot be
transmitted to human beings. . . . [A]ll production of pork, a Cuban staple, came to a
halt apparently for several months.
And see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 29.
22. On U.S. assassination attempts on Castro, see for example, U.S. Senate
Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence
Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim Report (S.
Rept. 94-465), 94th Congress, 1st Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1975, sections 1MB and IV, pp. 71 f, 139-180 (reporting both MONGOOSE and
non-MONGOOSE efforts to kill Castro).
One of the known assassination attempts on Castro was implemented the very day
that John F. Kennedy himself was assassinated. See Thomas G. Paterson, ed.,
Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989. An excerpt (pp. 153-154):
In mid-June [1963] the N.S.C. [National Security Council] approved a new sabotage
program. The C.I.A. quickly cranked up new dirty tricks and revitalized its
assassination option by making contact with a traitorous Cuban official, Rolando
Cubela Secades. Code-named AM/LASH, he plotted with the C.I.A. to kill Fidel
Castro. ... On the very day that Kennedy died, AM/LASH rendez-voused with C.I.A.
agents in Paris, where he received a ball-point pen rigged with a poisonous
hypodermic needle intended to produce Castro's instant death.
See also, William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World
War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, Appendix III, p. 453 (listing all known
prominent foreign individuals in whose assassination, or planning for the same, the
United States has been involved since the end of World War II).
23. On MONGOOSE in the 1 970s, see footnote 21 of this chapter.
24. On U.S. "contingency plans" for an invasion of Cuba and military deployment
in the region before the Cuban Missile Crisis, see for example, Raymond L. Garthoff,
Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1 989 edition), Washington: Brookings
Institution, 1 989. An excerpt (pp. 6-8, 31 , 50-51 ):
American exercises in the region continued apace through the summer and fall.
An airborne assault was tested in Jupiter Springs. In August the U.S. Strike
Command carried out Swift Strike II, a major limited war exercise in the Carolinas
with four Army divisions and eight tactical air squadrons, some 70,000 troops in all.
A strategic mobility command post exercise called Blue Water was conducted in
early October, and a large Marine amphibious assault was planned for mid-October
under the code-name Phibriglex. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 14
On October 1 , two weeks before discovery of the missiles, Secretary McNamara
met with Joint Chiefs of Staff and directed that readiness for possible implementation
of the contingency plans [to invade Cuba] be raised. For example, U.S. Air Force
tactical air units designated to meet the contingency war plan for an air strike (Oplan
312) were put under the operational control of CINCSTRIKE (Commander-in-Chief,
Strike Command); U.S. Navy forces were earmarked for 6-hour, 12-hour, and 24-
hour reaction times, and the war plan was revised to put the base at Mariel for Soviet
Komar missile patrol boats on the air-strike priority target list. On October 6,
increased readiness was also directed for forces earmarked for Oplan 314 and 316,
the two war plan variants for invasion of Cuba.
See also, Thomas G. Paterson, "Fixation with Cuba: The Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, and
Covert War Against Castro," in Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory:
American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 140-
142.
25. For Bundy's denial, see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices
About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years, New York: Random House, 1 988, p. 41 6 ("We
knew that we were not about to invade Cuba and we saw no reason for the Russians to
take a clearly risky step because of a fear that we ourselves understood to be
baseless").
26. On the "missile gap" being in the U.S.'s favor, see footnote 1 of this chapter.
27. For the two references to the factory bombing during the Cuban Missile Crisis,
see David A. Welch and James G. Blight, "The Eleventh Hour of the Cuban Missile
Crisis: An Introduction to the ExComm Transcripts," International Security, Winter 1987-
88, p. 1 2 n.1 8; Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1 989
edition), Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989, pp. 122-123.
28. On the General openly raising the level of security alert without informing
Washington, see for example, Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile
Crisis (1989 edition), Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989, pp. 61-62; David A.
Welch and James G. Blight, "The Eleventh Hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis: An
Introduction to the ExComm Transcripts," International Security, Winter 1987-88, p. 12
n.5.
29. On the enormous preponderance of U.S. military force at the time of the Cuban
Missile Crisis and the Generals' attitudes, see footnotes 1 , 24 and 28 of this chapter.
30. For Herodotus's analysis in the fifth century B.C., see Herodotus: A New and
Literal Version, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1972, Book One, Stanzas 95-100, pp.
44-46 (describing the story of the Medes, who gained their freedom through revolt, then
"were again reduced under a despotic government" when they voluntarily made Deioces
their king and he decreed: "that no man should be admitted to the king's presence, but
every one should consult him by means of messengers, and that none should be
permitted to see him; and, moreover, that it should be accounted indecency for any to
laugh or spit before him. He established such ceremony about his own person, for this
reason, that those who were his equals, and who were brought up with him, and of no
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 15
meaner family, nor inferior to him in manly qualities, might not, when they saw him,
grieve and conspire against him; but that he might appear to be of a different nature to
them who did not see him").
For a classic American example of cult-making, see Lawrence Friedman, Inventors
of the Promised Land, New York: Knopf, 1975, especially ch. 2, pp. xiii, 53-54. This
study notes how in the early years of the American Republic, an absurd George
Washington cult was contrived as part of the effort "to cultivate the ideological loyalties of
the citizenry" and thus create a sense of "viable nationhood." See also the text following
this footnote in U.P., and footnote 41 of this chapter.
For examples of U.S. government information that was classified, see Evan
Hendricks, Former Secrets: Government Records Made Public Through the Freedom of
Information Act, Washington: Campaign for Political Rights, 1982 (five hundred case
studies of the use of the Freedom Of Information Act).
31 . On Jefferson's and other Revolutionary War leaders' repressive attitudes and
actions, see for example, Leonard W. Levy, Emergence of a Free Press, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1985, chs. 7-10, especially pp. 177-181, 297, 337-348
(reviewing the writings and speeches of the leaders of the American Revolution and
Framers of the U.S. Constitution, and documenting that none of them -- including
Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine -- opposed criminalization of speech critical of the
government and its officials; pointing out that Jefferson himself authorized the internment
of political critics, and that the Continental Congress urged the states to enact legislation
to prevent the people from being "deceived and drawn into erroneous opinion."
Jefferson's statement that "a traitor in thought, but not in deed" should be punished is
quoted at p. 1 78). See also, Leonard W. Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties: the Darker
Side, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 25f. An excerpt (p. 25):
During the Revolution, Jefferson, like Washington, the Adamses, and Paine, believed
that there could be no toleration for serious differences of political opinion on the
issue of independence, no acceptable alternative to complete submission to the
patriot cause. Everywhere there was unlimited liberty to praise it, none to criticize it.
David Kairys, "Freedom of Speech," in David Kairys, ed., The Politics of Law: A
Progressive Critique, New York: Pantheon, 1982 (revised and expanded edition 1990),
pp. 237-272. An excerpt (p. 242):
[T]he experience of revolution and the emergence of the new nation generated a
wave of intolerance immediately before and after the adoption of the Constitution. . . .
Belief and pride in the attainment of freedom were turned against itself; nonconformity
and dissent were greeted with extreme, legally sanctioned, and sometimes violent
intolerance.
Although the issue of the relationship of the colonies to England was hotly and
publicly debated before and during the war, any sign of even an early questioning of
independence tended to be viewed as disloyalty. Many people had sentimental,
familial, and economic allegiances to England, which was often also their birthplace.
Because they believed or hoped differences could be settled without war, they were
treated as traitors, regardless of whether they had actually acted or sided with
England during the Revolution. They were subjected to special taxes, loyalty oaths,
banishment, and violence; and laws in most states prohibited them from serving on
juries, voting, holding office, buying land, or practicing certain designated professions.
Chomsky comments {Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1 991 , p. 399): "It
was not until the Jeffersonians were themselves subjected to repressive measures in the
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 16
late 1790s that they developed a body of more libertarian thought for self-preservation --
reversing course, however, when they gained power themselves." See also chapter 8 of
U.P. and its footnote 3.
32. For sources on the delivery of information to the media via news services, see
for example, Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to
Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1 990. An excerpt (pp. 22-23):
A few wire services provide the vast majority of newspapers with windows on the
world beyond the local horizon. . . . America's most conservative major wire service,
Associated Press, is also the most far-reaching - with its articles and photos running
in more than 1 ,400 daily papers, about 85 percent of all the dailies in the country.
A.P. machines also chatter inside about 6,000 of the nation's T.V. and radio stations.
In 1 12 foreign countries, A.P. wires are hooked into 8,500 news outlets. A.P.'s global
audience: a billion people a day.
Jonathan Fenby, The International News Services, New York: Schocken, 1986, pp. 7, 9,
73-74 (the four major Western news-wire services -- Associated Press, United Press
International, Reuters, and Agence France-Press ~ account for some 80 percent of the
international news circulating in the world today. Of these, A.P. is owned by member
newspapers; U.P.I, is privately owned; Reuters was owned mainly by the British media
until it went public in 1 984, but control was retained by the original owners by giving
lesser voting rights to the new stockholders; and Agence France-Presse is heavily
subsidized by the French government. These wire services "exist to serve markets," and
accordingly their prime concern "is with the rich media markets of the United States,
Western Europe, and Japan, and increasingly with the business community"); Anthony
Smith, The Geopolitics of Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1980, ch. 3.
33. On corporate concentration of the media, see for example, Ben H. Bagdikian,
The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, 5th edition, 1997 (original 1983), pp. xiii, 21-22.
The 1 997 preface to Bagdikian's study notes that the number of controlling firms in
books, movies, television, magazines, radio and daily newspapers has shrunk from the
23 listed in the book's 1 983 text to about ten dominant companies: Time Warner, Disney,
Viacom, News Corporation Limited/Murdoch, Sony, Tele-Communications, Inc.,
Seagram, Westinghouse, Gannett, and General Electric.
On Chomsky's views of the impact of concentrated ownership on the media
product, see the text of chapter 6 of U.P.
34. On advertising rates and the media, see chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 36.
35. Chomsky and Herman summarize their "Propaganda Model" in Manufacturing
Consent as follows (p. 2):
A propaganda model focuses on [the] inequality of wealth and power and its
multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which
money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and
allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to
the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news
"filters," fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner
wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 17
primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on
information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved
by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining
the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism.
These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of
news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to
print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what
is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what
amount to propaganda campaigns.
In a lecture, Chomsky described two flaws in Manufacturing Consents presentation of
the "Propaganda Model":
If the two of us were rewriting it today, we would change some things. For one
thing, I think when we talked about those "five filters," we realized at the time -- but
we left it in -- that the fifth one, "anticommunism," is too narrow. That's really a sub-
case of something more general: for the system to work properly, people have to be
frightened, and they have to shelter under the wings of authority. Fear of the Soviet
Union was a good way to frighten them. But by the time we wrote that book in the
late Eighties, it wasn't working anymore. It was clear to the Reagan administration
that the use of the Soviet Union as a device to intimidate and terrorize people wasn't
going to work very long, because it was going to collapse. And in fact, if you look
through the Reagan years -- and we should have put this in the book -- there was a
constant search for some new devil to frighten people. So I don't know if you
remember, but in 1981 the White House was surrounded by tanks because Libyan
hitmen were supposedly wandering around Washington trying to assassinate our
leader and so on. . . . And all through the Reagan years, just to try to intimidate
people, Arab terrorism was a tremendous fear. It was a good way of frightening the
American population.
The drug scares are another one of them: those are mostly concocted as a
technique of social control. ... In fact, the whole crime story is a political-class and
media concoction. I mean, crime is a pain, it's not nice. But crime in the United
States is not off the spectrum, it's very much like in other industrial societies. ... On
the other hand, fear of crime is far higher. And this has been inspired by propaganda,
and it goes way back.
So I think when we talked about the "fifth filter" we should have brought in all this
stuff - the way artificial fears are created with a dual purpose . . . partly to get rid of
people you don't like but partly to frighten the rest. Because if people are frightened,
they will accept authority. During the Second World War, for example, people
voluntarily (and, in my view, rightly) accepted discipline and authority. You know,
you follow orders because there are bigger fears out there, so yeah you huddle under
the protection of the authority figures and you do what they tell you. But in order to
maintain that when there's no actual threat requires concocting threats. And the
"anticommunist" filter was one of those, but we treated it much too narrowly. So that
ought to be changed.
The other big change - and I think both of us agree on this - is that in the book
as case studies we picked only foreign policy examples. And that creates the illusion
that somehow it's different when the media deal with domestic issues ~ and it isn't
different, it's the same. So what we should have done is mixed it. And in fact, since
then, both of us when we deal with the media address mostly the media and domestic
issues. So that was an imbalance and very misleading, because then you get the
sense ~ and you can understand how you would get the sense - that the media kind
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 18
of conform to state power on international issues, but when you have domestic
problems they don't do it. Which is totally false. It's dramatically the same on
domestic issues: trade issues, crime, pick it, it's always the same. Those are the
major changes that I would want to see made, and I think Ed Herman would probably
agree on this.
See also, Robert W. McChesney, "The Political Economy of the Mass Media: An
Interview With Edward S. Herman," Monthly Review, January 1 989, pp. 35f.
36. The review's exact phrase -- stating the conventional view of the media -- was:
"traditional Jeffersonian role as counterbalance to government power." See Ron
Rosenbaum, "Staying the Course in the Go-Go Years," New York Times Book Review,
April 9, 1989, section 7, p. 9.
37. For examples of use of terminology such as "the public mind," see footnotes 40
and 41 of this chapter; and chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 74 to 78.
38. For the quotation from the English Revolution, see Clement Walker, History of
Independency, 1, 1 661 , quoted in Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down:
Radical Ideas during the English Revolution, New York: Viking, 1972. Walker's exact
words (p. 58):
[T]hey have cast all the Mysteries and secrets of Government, both by Kings and
Parliaments, before the vulgar (like Pearl before Swine), and have taught both the
Souldiery and People to look so far into them as to ravel back all Governments, to the
first principles of nature. . . . They have made the People thereby so curious and so
arrogant that they will never find humility enough to submit to a civil rule.
On popular radicalism during the seventeenth-century English Revolution, see
also, Fenner Brockway, Britain's First Socialists: The Levellers, Agitators, and Diggers of
the English Revolution, London: Quartet Books, 1 980. And see footnote 1 7 of chapter 6
of U.P.
39. For Walter Lippmann's exact words, see Clinton Rossiter and James Lare,
eds., The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy, New York:
Random House, 1 963, pp. 91 -92 ("The public must be put in its place, so that each of us
may live free of the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd"); Walter Lippmann, Public
Opinion, New York: Macmillan, 1960 (original 1922). An excerpt (pp. 248, 310):
That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think,
denies. The process by which public opinion arises is certainly no less intricate than
it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone
who understands the process are plain enough. The creation of consent is not a new
art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of
democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic,
because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result
of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the
practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely
more significant than any shifting of economic power.
Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a
self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. . . . Under the impact
of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old
constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 19
example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed
for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart.
... In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment is so
successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out sharply against self-
centered opinion, the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and
can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond
the locality.
40. For the public relations manual's opening words, see Edward L. Bernays,
Propaganda, New York: Horace Liveright, 1928. The exact language (pp. 9, 31):
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of
the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate
this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the
true ruling power of our country. . . .
[C]learly it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda
continuously and systematically. In the active proselytizing minorities in whom
selfish interests and public interests coincide lie the progress and development of
American democracy.
41 . For some articulations of this leading doctrine of liberal-democratic intellectual
thought, see for example, footnotes 39 and 40 of this chapter. Also see for example,
Edward L. Bernays [the leading figure of the public relations industry], Propaganda, New
York: Horace Liveright, 1928. An excerpt (pp. 19-20):
In the days when kings were kings, Louis XIV made his modest remark, "L'Etat
c'est moi." He was nearly right. But times have changed. The steam engine, the
multiple press, and the public school, that trio of the industrial revolution, have taken
the power away from kings and given it to the people. The people actually gained
power which the king lost. For economic power tends to draw after it political power;
and the history of the industrial revolution shows how that power passed from the
king and the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal
schooling reenforced this tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of
the common people. For the masses promised to become king.
To-day, however, a reaction has set in. The minority has discovered a powerful
help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the
masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. In the
present structure of society, this practice is inevitable. Whatever of social
importance is done to-day, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture,
charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda.
Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.
Edward L. Bernays, "The Engineering of Consent," The Annals of The American
Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 250 ("Communication and Social
Action"), March 1 947, pp. 1 1 3-1 20. An excerpt (pp. 114-11 5):
[L]eaders, with the aid of technicians in the field who have specialized in utilizing
the channels of communication, have been able to accomplish purposefully and
scientifically what we have termed "the engineering of consent." This phrase quite
simply means the use of an engineering approach ~ that is, action based on thorough
knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried
practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs. . . .
The average American adult has only six years of schooling behind him. With
pressing crises and decisions to be faced, a leader frequently cannot wait for the
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 20
people to arrive at even general understanding. In certain cases, democratic leaders
must play their part in leading the public through the engineering of consent to socially
constructive goals and values. . . . The responsible leader, to accomplish social
objectives, must therefore be constantly aware of the possibilities of subversion. He
must apply his energies to mastering the operational know-how of consent
engineering, and to out-maneuvering his opponents in the public interest.
Edward L. Bernays, Public Relations, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952. An
excerpt (p. 78):
An important factor in developing the climate of public opinion was the demonstration
to the peoples of the world in World War I that wars are fought with words and ideas
as well as with arms and bullets. Businessmen, private institutions, great universities
- all kinds of groups - became conditioned to the fact that they needed the public;
that the great public could now perhaps be harnessed to their cause as it had been
harnessed during the war to the national cause, and that the same methods could do
the job.
Harold Lasswell [one of the leading figures of modern political science], "Propaganda,"
in Edwin R.A. Seligman, ed. -in-chief, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, New York:
Macmillan, 1933, Vol. 12 (reprinted in 1954 edition). An excerpt (pp. 527, 523-526):
[Rjegard for men in the mass rests upon no democratic dogmatisms about men
being the best judges of their own interests. The modern propagandist, like the
modern psychologist, recognizes that men are often poor judges of their own
interests. . . .
[The spread of schooling] did not release the masses from ignorance and
superstition but altered the nature of both and compelled the development of a whole
new technique of control, largely through propaganda . . . [which] attains eminence as
the one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery or other
possible control techniques . . . [and] is no more moral or immoral than a pump
handle. ... [It is] certain that propaganda will in time be viewed with fewer
misgivings.
Thomas Bailey [historian], The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public
Opinion on Foreign Policy, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964 (original 1948). An
excerpt (p. 13):
Because the masses are notoriously short-sighted and generally cannot see danger
until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness
of their own long-run interests. . . . Deception of the people may in fact become
increasingly necessary, unless we are willing to give our leaders in Washington a
freer hand.
Reinhold Niebuhr [highly influential moralist and theologian], Moral Man and Immoral
Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, New York: Scribners, 1 952 (original 1 932). An
excerpt (pp. 221, 21):
The naive faith of the proletarian is the faith of the man of action. Rationality
belongs to the cool observers. There is of course an element of illusion in the faith of
the proletarian, as there is in all faith. But it is a necessary illusion. . . .
The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or
political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his
activities from effective control. . . . Since the increasing complexity of society
makes it impossible to bring all those who are in charge of its intricate techniques and
processes, and who are therefore in possession of social power, under complete
control, it will always be necessary to rely partly upon the honesty and self-restraint
of those who are not socially restrained.
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 21
(For a discussion of Niebuhr's ideas and their reception, see Noam Chomsky, "Reinhold
Niebuhr," Grand Street, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1 987, pp. 1 97-21 2.)
Roughly the same stance was taken by Woodrow Wilson, the President of the
United States from 1 91 3 to 1 921 . See Woodrow Wilson, "The Philosophy of Politics"
(unfinished manuscript), in Henry Wilkinson Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic
Years, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. An excerpt (p. 263):
It is asked . . . whether direct expressions of the will of the people be not the only just
way of determining some of the graver questions of state policy, as, for instance, the
question of peace and war. On the contrary is it not a pertinent suggestion that such
questions may involve elements visible or appreciable only by the few -- the selected
leaders of public opinion and rulers of state policy. Only to them will it be apparent
upon which side lies obedience to the highest, most permanent and just ends of the
nation. Only to them may it be revealed what these ends are. . . . The popular vote
would probably have drawn us into the vortex of the French revolution, would
doubtless have held us back from the second assertion of our rights against Great
Britain. And, as regards other questions, are not the straight lines -- the projected
course -- of national progress more likely to be seen by the thinking few who stand
upon the high places of the nation than by the toiling multitudes in the valleys who
give no part of their day to so much as an endeavour to descry these things? Must
not the nation have trained eyes?
For the views of the Washington Posts publisher, Katharine Graham, see Mark
Perry, "The Case Against William Webster," Regardie's Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 5,
January 1990, pp. 90f. Graham explained in a speech delivered at C.I.A. headquarters:
"We live in a dirty and dangerous world," she said. "There are some things the
general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes
when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the
press can decide whether to print what it knows."
The influential Harvard government professor Samuel Huntington advocates a
similar position (Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 75):
The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but
not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight
it begins to evaporate.
Likewise, a major publication of the Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission -- a
private organization of elites in the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan, which achieved
some notoriety when its members captured the posts of President, Vice-President,
National Security Advisor, Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury, and a host of
lesser offices during the Carter administration ~ written by scholars from the trilateral
regions, also articulates these same positions. See M.J. Crozier, S.P. Huntington and J.
Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the
Trilateral Commission, New York: New York University Press, 1 975, at pp. 1 1 3, 98, 5-6
(concluding that, in the wake of the popular mobilization of the 1 960s, more "moderation
in democracy" was needed to alleviate the "crisis" that the popular movements brought
on; as the American contributor recalled, with a sense of nostalgia perhaps, before the
"crisis of democracy" had erupted, "Truman had been able to govern the country with the
cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers. But by the
mid-1 960s, the sources of power in society had diversified tremendously, and this was
no longer possible"). An excerpt (pp. 8, 113):
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 22
Finally, and perhaps most seriously, there are the intrinsic challenges to the
viability of democratic government which grow directly out of the functioning of
democracy. Democratic government does not necessarily function in a self-
sustaining or self-correcting equilibrium fashion. It may instead function so as to give
rise to forces and tendencies which, if unchecked by some outside agency, will
eventually lead to the undermining of democracy. This was, of course, a central
theme in de Toqueville's forebodings about democracy; it reappeared in the writings
of Schumpeter and Lippmann; it is a key element in the current pessimism about the
future of democracy. . . .
Al Smith once remarked that "the only cure for the evils of democracy is more
democracy." Our analysis suggests that applying that cure at the present time could
well be adding fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the
United States stem from an excess of democracy ~ an "excess of democracy" in
much the same sense in which David Donald used the term to refer to the
consequences of the Jacksonian revolution which helped to precipitate the Civil War.
Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy.
The Trilateral Commission's study also addresses the role of the intelligentsia, who
come in two varieties: (1) the "technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals,"
responsible, serious, and constructive, and (2) the "value-oriented intellectuals," a group
who pose a danger to democracy as they "devote themselves to the derogation of
leadership, the challenging of authority, and the unmasking and delegitimation of
established institutions," in part through the indoctrination of the young.
For a survey of the thinking that has underpinned the development of public
relations-based democracy, see Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin, New York:
Basic Books, 1 996. See also chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 74 to 80.
42. On the public's views of the media, see for example, Thomas B. Rosenstiel,
'"Serious Reservations' On Fairness Are Cited," Los Angeles Times, January 16, 1986,
p. 1 . An excerpt:
53% of those surveyed thought the press was one-sided when presenting
political and social issues. . . . Contrary to the familiar charge that Americans
consider the news media increasingly powerful and even arrogant, "a majority (53%)
sees the press as often influenced by powerful people and organizations, not as
independent," the study said. Heavy majorities see the press as influenced by the
federal government (73%), corporations (70%), advertisers (65%) and labor unions
(62%). ...
[Ojnly about one in five believes that the news product itself is liberally biased. . . .
"[T]he public thinks powerful groups and institutions push the press around. . . . We
find almost no evidence that the public regards the news media as too adversarial."
Barry Sussman, "Public Has Sharp Complaints About News Media, Poll Says,"
Washington Post, August 1 6, 1 981 , p. A1 . An excerpt:
Media critics say the press tries to tear down the government in Washington.
About one-quarter of the public feels that way, but four in every 10 people have
exactly the opposite complaint: They feel the national news organizations are not
critical enough of the government. . . .
Among the most stinging citizen complaints is a widely held belief that the news
media hold back important news from the public, a sentiment that is apparently
shared by more than half the people. Another is an even more pervasive perception
that reporters and editors for T.V. network news operations and large newspapers
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 23
such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and others have little or no
concern for the average person.
See also, "Is this how you see the press?" [this title is above a drawing of a sheep in a
wolf costume], New York Times, January 14, 1986, p. A26 (full page advertisement for
the 1 985 study "The People and the Press," conducted for Times Mirror by the Gallup
Organization, called "the most comprehensive study ever conducted of public attitudes
toward the press," which concludes that public views the media as "a sheep in wolf's
clothing"). And see the text following this footnote in U.P., and footnote 46 of this
chapter.
43. These detailed studies of closely paired examples can be found in, among
other books, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1 988; Noam Chomsky and
Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism -- The
Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, Boston: South End, 1 979; and Noam
Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the
Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume
II, Boston: South End, 1979. Chomsky summarizes the studies' outcome {Necessary
Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, p. 137):
The study of paired examples reveals a consistent pattern of radically dichotomous
treatment, in the predicted direction. In the case of enemy crimes, we find outrage;
allegations based on the flimsiest evidence, often simply invented, and uncorrectable,
even when conceded to be fabrication; careful filtering of testimony to exclude
contrary evidence while allowing what may be useful; reliance on official U.S.
sources, unless they provide the wrong picture, in which case they are avoided
(Cambodia under Pol Pot is a case in point); vivid detail; insistence that the crimes
originate at the highest level of planning, even in the absence of evidence or credible
argument; and so on. Where the locus of responsibility is at home, we find precisely
the opposite: silence or apologetics; avoidance of personal testimony and specific
detail; world-weary wisdom about the complexities of history and foreign cultures that
we do not understand; narrowing of focus to the lowest level of planning or
understandable error in confusing circumstances; and other forms of evasion.
44. The rare mainstream reviews in the United States of Manufacturing Consent
and other works employing similar analysis provide a revealing study in themselves of
the media. See for example, Nicholas Lemann, "Book Reviews," New Republic,
January 9, 1 989, p. 34 (stating that Chomsky and Herman want "more state control" over
the media, along with other falsehoods; compare, for instance, Manufacturing Consents
p. 252 with the way that passage is quoted in the review); Michael Pollan, "Capitalist
Crusaders," New York Times, April 6, 1986, section 7, p. 26 (criticizing Michael Parenti's
analysis of the media in his book Inventing Reality-- which argues that the same groups,
the "corporate class," control the state and the media -- on the ground that it "overlooks a
key feature of American journalism," namely that "the press generally defines the news
as what politicians say").
Willingness even to recognize the bare possibility of analysis of the media in terms
of a "Propaganda Model" is so uncommon in the press that the few existing cases that
do so, even when clearly failing to understand, are notable by this fact alone. One of the
very rare attempts to evaluate the "Propaganda Model" with actual argument, instead of
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 24
mere invective, was by the outstanding and independent-minded historian Walter
LaFeber. See Walter LaFeber, "Whose News?," New York Times, November 6, 1988,
section 7, p. 27 (see also the ensuing exchange of letters with Edward Herman in the
New York Times, December 11,1 988, section 7, p. 46; and Chomsky's discussion of
how the cases that LaFeber cites as criticisms in fact closely fit the "Propaganda Model,"
in Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies,
Boston: South End, 1989, pp. 148-151). See also, Edward S. Herman, "The
Propaganda Model Revisited," Monthly Review, Vol. 48, No. 3, July/August 1996, pp.
1 1 5-1 28 (discussing and refuting the few critiques of the "Propaganda Model" that
appeared in the decade after Manufacturing Consent). And see chapter 9 of U.P. and its
footnote 4.
Some other studies providing examples which support the "Propaganda Model"
include: Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and
Propaganda, Boston: South End, 1982, especially ch. 4, pp. 151-199; Edward S.
Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda, Montreal:
Black Rose, 1992; Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to
Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1 990; Michael Parenti, Inventing
Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, New York: St. Martin's, 1986; James Aronson,
The Press and the Cold War, Boston: Beacon, 1 970 (expanded edition, New York:
Monthly Review, 1990).
45. On support for welfare state programs, see footnote 7 of this chapter; and
chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnote 50 (and for related information, its footnotes 18 and
74).
On opposition to Central America policies, see the text above this footnote in U.P.,
and footnotes 4, 5, 49 and 52 of this chapter; the text of chapter 4 of U.P.; and chapter 7
of U.P. and its footnote 54.
On public attitudes towards the Vietnam War, see chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnote
57; see also the text following this footnote in U.P., and footnotes 72, 73 and 77 of this
chapter.
46. On the public's views of media coverage of Carter, see for example, Mark
Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, New York:
Schocken Books, 1989, pp. 84-85; Barry Sussman, "Public Has Sharp Complaints
About News Media, Poll Says," Washington Post, August 16, 1981, p. A1 ("42 percent
say the major news media were too critical of Jimmy Carter while he was president -- a
striking indictment" of the media; roughly the same number of Republicans and
Democrats expressed this opinion). On the public's views of media coverage of Reagan
in 1985 before the Iran-contra scandal broke, see for example, Michael J. Robinson,
"Pressing Opinion," Public Opinion (American Enterprise Institute), Vol. 9, No. 3,
September/October 1986, pp. 56-59 at p. 58 ("nearly eight in ten say the press is fair to
Reagan"). On the public's views of Reagan at the time of the Iran-contra scandal in
contrast to the media's coverage of it, see for example, On Bended Knee, p. 334 and ch.
14.
47. On public views of the media, see footnote 42 of this chapter.
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 25
48. On public support for the nuclear freeze movement, see chapter 6 of U.P. and
its footnote 3.
49. On public attitudes towards U.S. Nicaragua policies in the 1 980s, see for
example, David K. Shipler, "Poll Shows Confusion on Aid to Contras," New York Times,
April 15, 1986, p. A6 (reporting a New York Times/C.B.S. News Poll showing 62 percent
of Americans were opposed to giving further aid to the contra rebels, with only 25
percent supporting President Reagan's request for an additional $100 million in funding;
strikingly, 52 percent of those who approved of Reagan's handling of the Presidency
also opposed increased aid. "Opposition to aid for the contras crossed all political,
ethnic and regional and socio-economic lines. No demographic group favored it. . . .
The higher the education and income, the less the opposition." The same poll revealed
that only 38 percent of the population knew that the U.S. was supporting the contras and
not the Nicaraguan government); W. Lance Bennett, "Marginalizing the Majority:
Conditioning Public Opinion to Accept Managerial Democracy," in Michael Margolis and
Gary A. Mauser, eds., Manipulating Public Opinion: Essays on Public Opinion as a
Dependent Variable, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1989, pp. 321-361 (careful study
of New York Times coverage of the contra issue, demonstrating that the Times's
inclusion of opposition voices tracked Congressional opposition, plummeting during
periods of Congressional red-baiting even though public opposition throughout the
period remained constant and overwhelming); Adam Clymer, "Most Americans in Survey
Oppose Aid for Overthrow of Sandinistas," New York Times, June 5, 1 985, p. A8
(reporting the results of a heavily loaded poll question which nonetheless found that 53
percent of the public opposed U.S. assistance to the contras; notably, the loaded poll
question asked: "Ronald Reagan says the U.S. should help the people in Nicaragua
who are trying to overthrow the pro-Soviet Government there. Other people say that
even if our country does not like the Government in Nicaragua, we should not help
overthrow it. Do you think we should help the people trying to overthrow the
Government of Nicaragua, or should we not help them?" Only 32 percent of
respondents said that the U.S. should help overthrow the Nicaraguan government;
approximately 62 percent of those who expressed an opinion opposed the Reagan
administration's policies. Furthermore, only 24 percent of those polled said that they
favored sending military weapons and supplies to the contras).
50. For the Nicaraguan Ambassador's letter, see Carlos Tunnerman, "Nicaragua's
Peace Aims," Op-Ed, New York Times, March 19, 1987, p. A27.
51 . For Cahill's letter, see Kevin Cahill, "Respect, Please, for Nicaraguans'
Rights," Op-Ed, New York Times, February 14, 1987, section 1 , p. 27.
52. On the defection of Latin America scholars from the "acceptable" range of
debate on the issue, see for example, Lars Schoultz, National Security and United
States Policy toward Latin America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 22-
23; Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism, Boston: South End, 1988, pp. 205f.
53. Bonner was dispatched to the Financial desk, where he labored for one year
before taking a leave of absence to write a book about El Salvador. Upon returning to
the Times, he first was sent back to the Financial desk, then later to the Metropolitan
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 26
desk, a clear demotion. He resigned from the New York Times on July 3, 1 984. Asked
in an interview with Mark Hertsgaard why he had recalled Bonner from El Salvador in
the first place, Abe Rosenthal, then-Managing Editor of the New York Times, explained:
The general impression among me and some others was that Bonner was first-rate,
but we were really screwing this guy, because he wasn't getting what you really need
to be a reporter. You don't have to get it necessarily at the 77'mes, but you have to
have some background in reporting non-foreign affairs in order to be a foreign affairs
reporter. You have to know how a paper runs, what a paper considers its standards,
and so on.
See Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, New
York: Schocken Books, 1989, p. 199.
For another account of Bonner's firing, see Mark Danner, "The Truth of El Mazote,"
New Yorker, December 6, 1993, pp. 50f. An excerpt (pp. 122-123):
According to Rosenthal, Bonner was removed because he had never been fully
trained in the 77'mes' particular methods. Bonner, he said, "didn't know the
techniques of weaving a story together. ... I brought him back because it seemed
terribly unfair to leave him there without training. . . ." But "training" was not the only
issue - for that matter, as Bonner pointed out to me, he had spent a good part of
1981 on the Metro desk - and, at least in Rosenthal's case, the question of Bonner's
"journalistic technique" seems to have been inextricably bound up with what the
executive editor came to perceive as the reporter's left-wing sympathies. . . . Several
current and former 77'mes employees (none of whom would speak for attribution)
pointed to a scene in a Georgetown restaurant a few weeks after the El Mozote
[massacre] story ran - it was the evening of the annual Gridiron dinner - in which
Rosenthal criticized Bonner and angrily described the sufferings that Communist
regimes inflict on their people.
Note that Rosenthal's most angry denial, which follows, conveniently sidetracks the
central issue. Rosenthal declared (pp. 1 21 -1 22):
"At no time did anybody in the United States government suggest to me, directly or
indirectly, that I remove Mr. Bonner. . . . [A]nyone who would approach the New York
Times and suggest to me that I remove or punish a correspondent would have to be
an idiot. To imply that a man who devoted himself to journalism would remove a
reporter because of the U.S. government or the C.I.A., or whatever, is ridiculous,
naive, cruel, and slanderous."
See also, Editorial, "On Credulity," Wall Street Journal, March 19, 1993, p. A10; A.M.
Rosenthal, "Let's Set the Record Straight," Letter, Wall Street Journal, April 6, 1993, p.
A15; Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, "Iran-Contra's Untold Story," Foreign Policy, Fall
1 988, pp. 3-30 at p. 6 ("U.S. embassy officials boasted in 1 982 that they had forced the
New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner out of the country because of his
unfavorable reporting on the Salvadoran government"); Robert Parry, Fooling America:
How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom,
New York: Morrow, 1 992, pp. 207-21 1 .
On the impact of Bonner's removal on press coverage of El Salvador -- including
documentation of how the New York Times's coverage took on the Reagan
administration's perspective thereafter -- see Michael Massing, "About-face on El
Salvador," Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 1983, pp. 42-49; JoAnn
Wypijewski, "Shirley Christian and the Times on Chile," Lies of Our Times, Vol. 1 , No. 1 ,
pp. 14-15 (profile of a Latin America reporter hired by Rosenthal in the wake of the
Bonner departure).
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 27
Similar pressures exist in far more mundane contexts than that of the Bonner case.
See for example, Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan
Presidency, New York: Schocken Books, 1989, pp. 186-203. An excerpt (pp. 159, 163):
When the First Lady [Nancy Reagan] made a photo opportunity visit to Phoenix
House, a drug rehabilitation center in New York City, for example, one New York
Times reporter had the temerity to write a story lead noting the irony of Mrs. Reagan
posing with impoverished junkies while wearing a designer dress worth thousands of
dollars. The lead enraged one of the paper's senior editors. He stormed into the
middle of the newsroom and, in front of numerous other reporters, loudly berated the
reporter, warning that the reference to Mrs. Reagan's dress was injurious both to the
77'mes and to the reporter's career and ordering the lead changed immediately.
Likewise Lee Lescaze, who was transferred from the White House beat to The
Washington Posts "Style" section in 1982, remembered how "it suddenly became
clear we were not to take swipes at Nancy Reagan. . . ."
When asked to grant an interview [for Hertsgaard's book] to discuss colleagues'
claims that her scripts had frequently been altered and her story proposals rejected
by superiors in New York in order to make her coverage less critical of Reagan,
[C.B.S. reporter] Lesley Stahl [denied Hertsgaard's request to go on the record about
the matter but] quickly replied, "Well, all that happened, I can't deny it."
Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in
News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990, pp. 21-22 (on Pulitzer Prize-winning
columnist Sydney Schanberg's departure from the New York Times). An excerpt:
On August 20, 1985, page 18 of the [New York Times] carried a cryptic
announcement: "After four years of writing his twice-weekly 'New York column on
the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, Sydney Schanberg has been asked to
accept another assignment, which is now under discussion. . . ." What was the
problem? Journalist Pete Hamill later described the evolving focus of Schanberg's
op-ed pieces: "the homeless, the injured, the casualties of the indifference and greed
of big builders, bankers, and other pillars of the Establishment. . . ." His twice-a-week
column had been spotlighting the financial beneficiaries of various social ills ~ "taking
on some of the people and institutions for whom the 77'mes itself was edited. . . ."
After the 77'mes terminated his column, Schanberg resigned from the paper. . . .
As Schanberg said in an interview with a small community newspaper, "The
closer you may step on toes, the closer the toes get to the headquarters of the
journalistic organization, the more loudly are the protests registered and the more
loudly are they heard." Replying to hundreds of readers' irate letters about the axing
of Schanberg's column, 77'mes vice-chairman Sydney Gruson summarized the whole
sequence of events this way: "We have come to conclude after four years that a
better column might be produced by another writer."
Carole and Paul Bass, "Censorship American-Style," Index on Censorship (London),
June 1985, pp. 6-7 (similar anecdotes about reporters Barbara Koeppel, Jonathan
Kwitny, and Seymour Hersh); Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, White-Out: The
C.I.A., Drugs and the Press, London: Verso, 1998, chs. 1 and 2 (on the successful
campaign to destroy the career of San Jose Mercury-News investigative reporter Gary
Webb after his reporting about links between the C.I.A. and crack traffickers); Ramsey
Clark [former U.S. Attorney General], The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf,
New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1 992. An excerpt (p. 1 39):
Even on the homefront, commentators who voiced the wrong opinion [about the Gulf
War] ran into trouble. Warren Hinckle of the San Francisco Examiner was placed on
a three-month "vacation" for his known views against the war. Dr. Orlando Garcia, a
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 28
popular talk show host on New York Spanish-language station WADO, was
dismissed for his "unbalanced view of the war." Editor Joe Reedy of the Kutztown
(PA) Patriot was fired for writing an editorial "How About a Little Peace?" just before
the bombing started. In an editorial explaining why Reedy was fired, two weeks into
the bombing, the paper said "the time for debate has passed."
See also, Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997
(original 1 983), especially chs. 2 to 8 (many revealing examples of the pressures on
journalists and editors); Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass
Media, New York: St. Martin's, 1986 (updated edition 1993), especially ch. 3 (scores of
examples of direct advertiser pressure on media outlets).
54. On the reactions to the slight editorial deviation at the New York Times, see
"Behind the Profit Squeeze at the New York Times," Business Week, August 30, 1 976,
p. 42. An excerpt:
Editorially and politically, the newspaper has also slid precipitously to the left and has
become stridently antibusiness in tone, ignoring the fact that the 77'mes itself is a
business -- and one with very serious problems.
The article then remarks on the New York Times's editorial supporting a "hefty tax
increase for business," commenting as follows: '"Something like that,' muses a Wall
Street analyst, 'could put the Times right out of business.'" An accompanying remark
reminds that: "Following a Times series on medical incompetence," a magazine run by
the parent company "lost $500,000 in pharmaceutical advertising."
On the impact of these warnings, see James Aronson, "The Times is a-changing,"
In These Times, March 2-8, 1 977, p. 24. An excerpt:
Most important of all were changes on the editorial side itself, designed, it would
seem, to renew "business confidence." In April 1976, publisher Sulzberger had
announced that cousin John B. Oakes, whose supervision of the editorial page had
actually induced people to read a heretofore largely unread page, would retire in
January 1977 to spend the two years before his mandatory retirement traveling the
world in search of fresh insight for the readership. Eyebrows rose over Oakes' eight-
month notice, and went even higher with the quick announcement of Oakes'
replacement: Max Frankel, Sunday editor and former chief of the Washington Bureau,
whom the Sunday staff had affectionately named Attila the Hun. Clearly the "lean to
the left" would halt. ...
Will all this make Business Week happy? First reports indicate that it will. . . .
Advertising is up slightly, as is circulation. The battle for the suburbs has been
joined.
For another similar example, see "Castor oil or Camelot?," Economist (London),
December 5, 1 987, p. 1 01 . This article notes that "Projects unsuitable for corporate
sponsorship tend to die on the vine" because "stations have learned to be sympathetic
to the most delicate sympathies of corporations," citing the case of public T.V. station
W.N.E.T. which "lost its corporate underwriting from Gulf + Western as a result of a
documentary called 'Hungry for Profit,' about multinationals buying up huge tracts of land
in the third world." These actions "had not been those of a friend," Gulf's Chief
Executive wrote to the station, adding that the documentary was "virulently anti-
business, if not anti-American." Even before the program was shown, in anticipation of
negative corporate reaction, station officials "did all we could to get the program
sanitized," according to one station source. "Most people believe that W.N.E.T. would
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 29
not make the same mistake today," the Economist concludes. Chomsky comments: "Nor
would others -- the warning need only be implicit."
See also, Felicity Barringer, "Daily News Tries Flattery to Woo Back Grocery Ads,"
New York Times, June 1 4, 2001 , p. B1 (after the New York Daily News published "a
series of articles saying many city supermarkets were too dirty to meet state standards,
all but one of the city's major supermarket chains have refused to advertise in the
newspaper" and "some also stopped selling the newspaper"; "supermarket industry
executives estimate the newspapers' weekly revenue loss at $50,000 to $1 00,000,"
leading to prompt "overture[s] by the newspaper's business executives to repair relations
with an important group of advertisers").
And see Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1978 (on the influence of advertising upon the growth and
direction of U.S. radio and television); Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston:
Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997 (original 1983), especially chs. 7 and 9; Michael Parenti,
Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, New York: St. Martin's, 1986 (updated
edition 1993), ch. 9; Pat Aufderheide, "What Makes Public T.V. Public?," Progressive,
January 1 988, pp. 35-38 (discussing the failure of public television to raise public debate
as a result of its reliance on corporate underwriting); James Aronson, Deadline for the
Media: Today's Challenges to Press, T. V. and Radio, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1 972,
pp. 261 -263 (discussing a vicious local advertisers' boycott). And see chapter 4 of U.P.
and its footnote 36.
55. For an account of how one major newspaper lost money by increasing its
readership -- and more on the role of advertising in the media -- see chapter 4 of U.P.
and its footnote 36. See also, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing
Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1 988, p. 1 4
(elaborating on how, in the present market, major print media cannot support their
production and distribution costs based on sales alone).
56. For polls on support for the opposition parties in Nicaragua in the 1 980s, see
for example, Interamerican's Public Opinion Series, No. 7, June 4-5, 1 988, Los Angeles:
Interamerican Research Center, and C.I.S.P.E.S. [Committee In Solidarity with the
People of El Salvador], Alert!, March 1 988 (reporting polls conducted under the auspices
of the Centro Interamericano de Investigaciones in Mexico and the Jesuit University in
Managua, showing that none of the opposition political groups in Nicaragua had the
support of more than 3 percent of the population; combined, they had the support of 9
percent, less than one-third the support for the Sandinistas. As for President Ortega
himself, 42 percent ranked him "good/excellent" and 29 percent "fair." For comparison,
in a Jesuit University poll in El Salvador that received little notice, 6 percent of the
respondents supported Duarte's Christian Democrats and 10 percent supported the
ARENA party, while 75 percent stated that no party represented them).
On Kinzer's articles, see Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing
Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1 988, ch. 3.
57. For Chomsky's article, see Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky,
"Propaganda Mill: The media churn out the official line," Progressive, June 1988, pp. 14-
17.
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 30
58. On the funding of Accuracy In Media, see for example, Louis Wolf, "Accuracy in
Media Rewrites News and History," Covert Action Information Bulletin, Spring 1984, pp.
24-38 (giving a list of major donors to A.I.M. and their contributions, and describing the
organization's hierarchy and origins); Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky,
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York:
Pantheon, 1988, pp. 27, 343 n.105 (summarizing A.I.M.'s influence and funding base).
On overt corporate flak and pressures on the media, see footnote 75 of chapter 1
of U.P.; and footnote 54 of this chapter. On similar pressures in the education system,
see footnote 8 of chapter 7 of U.P.
59. On the U.S. recruiting Nazis after World War II, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its
footnote 80.
60. Leslie Cockburn's story was aired on the program West 57th on April 6, 1 987,
and is described in Tom Shales, '"West 57th,' Back With a Flash," Washington Post,
April 6, 1987, p. C1 . See also, Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan
Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, The Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra
Drug Connection, New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1 987.
For documentation of U.S. government involvement in drug-running, and on the
media's treatment of this issue, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 79.
61 . For the New York Times's reporting of the U.N.l.T.A. bombing, see A. P., "Pro-
West Angola Rebels Say They Downed Plane," New York Times, November 11,1 983,
p. A5 (one hundred-word report of U.N.l.T.A.'s downing of an Angolan airliner with all
126 passengers killed).
On the contrast in coverage with the K.A.L. 007 downing, see Edward S. Herman,
"Gatekeeper versus Propaganda Models: A Critical American Perspective," in Peter
Golding, Graham Murdock, and Philip Schlesinger, eds., Communicating Politics: Mass
communications and the political process, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1 986, pp. 1 81 -
1 95 at pp. 1 89, 1 84 (noting that "Newsweek and Time magazines never mentioned [the
U.N.l.T.A. bombing]; the New York Times had three tiny wire services notices
aggregating ten inches of space." In contrast, "The New York Times had 147 news
items on the [K.A.L. 007 downing] in September 1983 alone, covering 2,789 column
inches of space. For ten consecutive days, a special section of the newspaper was
devoted to the case. C.B.S. evening News attended to the event on 26 separate
evenings from 31 August to 30 September. Time and Newsweek each had three long
and emotional articles on the subject in September, occupying a remarkable total of
1 ,490 column inches between them").
On the deficiencies of the Reagan administration's explanation of the K.A.L. 007
downing and its outright falsifications concerning the incident, see for example, R.W.
Johnson, Shootdown: Flight 007 and the American Connection, New York: Viking, 1 986;
Seymour M. Hersh, "The Target Is Destroyed": What Really Happened to Flight 007 and
What America Knew About It, New York: Random House, 1986. See also, Editorial,
"The Lie That Wasn't Shot Down," New York Times, January 1 8, 1 988, p. A1 8 (eventual
acknowledgment that the Reagan administration knew that the Soviets did not know that
K.A.L. 007 was a civilian aircraft, as proven by Freedom of Information Act discoveries
made by Congressional Representative Lee Hamilton).
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 31
62. On the October 1 976 bombing of the Cuban airliner, see for example, A.P., "78
Are Believed Killed as Cuban Jetliner Crashes in Sea After Blast," New York Times,
October 7, 1976, p. 8 (fourteen-paragraph story); David Binder, "Havana Steps Up
Airliner Security After Bombing Fatal to 73 and Seeks to Place the Blame on the C.I.A.,"
New York Times, November 1 , 1976, p. 9 (another fourteen-paragraph report, noting the
Cuban government's allegation that the C.I.A. was involved in the bombing); William
Schapp, "New Spate of Terrorism: Key Leaders Unleashed," Covert Action Information
Bulletin, December 1980, pp. 4-8 (on the rise of Orlando Bosch, the C.I.A.-trained
terrorist who confessed to the bombing of the Cuban airliner, with the assistance of
another C.I.A.-trained terrorist, Luis Posada); Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon,
Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart,
1990, pp. 283-284 (on Luis Posada, the reported mastermind of the 1976 bombing);
"United Nations: Cuba Cites More Evidence In Charges Against U.S.," Inter Press
Service, May 27, 1992 (available on Nexis database)(on Cuba's continuing efforts to
have the U.N. condemn the United States for the C.I.A.'s role in aiding and abetting the
bombers; this wire-service article was not published by U.S. newspapers).
For a rare article in the U.S. press mentioning the Cuban airliner bombing years
later, see Editorial, "A terrorist test for Bush," Boston Globe, August 1 8, 1 989, p. 1 2. An
excerpt:
President Bush is fending off an embarrassing bid by some in Miami's Cuban-
American community to prevent the deportation of the godfather of anti-Castro
terrorism, Orlando Bosch. . . . The June deportation order describes Bosch as
"having repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause
indiscriminate injury and death." The 62-year-old Cuban-born political fanatic barely
bothers to deny the charge. . . .
Bosch is in a class with terrorists such as Abu Nidal. There is overwhelming
evidence that he masterminded the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner taking off from
Barbados that killed 73. He spent 1 1 years in jail in Venezuela for that atrocity.
Bosch's partner in the airliner bombing was Luis Posada Carriles, freed from jail in
Venezuela to become a logistics officer in the support team supplying the C.I.A.-
backed contras in San Salvador in 1 986.
63. For the New York Times's treatment of the Israeli airplane atrocity, see
Editorial, "After Sinai," New York Times, March 1 , 1973, p. 40 ("No useful purpose is
served by an acrimonious debate over the assignment of blame for the downing of a
Libyan airliner in the Sinai peninsula last week"); Editorial, "Tragic Blunder," New York
Times, February 23, 1 973, p. A32 ("there simply was a series of dreadful blunders");
Terence Smith, "Israelis Down A Libyan Airliner In The Sinai, Killing At Least 74; Say It
Ignored Warnings To Land," New York Times, February 22, 1973, p. A1 . An excerpt:
The Israeli Cabinet in a communique said that the jetliner had been intercepted as
a "last resort. . . ." The Cairo radio . . . [said] the pilot reported that he had been having
radio difficulty and had lost his way because of bad weather. Shortly afterward, the
radio said, the pilot radioed that the Israelis were demanding that he land. . . .
Official reaction was guarded. Premier Golda Meir expressed it in a statement
issued last night that said: "The government of Israel expresses its deep sorrow at
the loss of life resulting from the crash of the Libyan plane in Sinai and regrets that
the Libyan [sic; the pilot was a Frenchman subcontracted from Air France] pilot did
not respond to the repeated warnings that were given in accordance with international
procedure."
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 32
64. On Prime Minister Meir's smooth visit to the U.S. after the airplane bombing,
see for example, John W, Finney, "Mrs. Meir In U.S. For 10-Day Visit," New York Times,
February 27, 1973, p. A1 ; John W. Finney, "Ms. Meir Says Israel Feared a Suicide-
Bombing by Airliner," New York Times, March 2, 1973, p. A4 ("Mr. Nixon gave
assurance to Mrs. Meir, who is seeking $51 5-million in new credits and aid from the
United States for additional weapons, 'of continuing United States support'").
After numerous lies ~ including that the French pilot was not authorized to fly the jet
plane ~ Israel confirmed that there had been an "error of judgment" and agreed to make
ex gratia payments (which were paid by the United States) to the families of victims "in
deference to humanitarian considerations," while denying any "guilt" or Israeli
responsibility. See for example, Terence Smith, "Israel Erred in Judgment On Libyan
Jet, Dayan Says," New York Times, February 25, 1973, p. A1 ('"we erred -- under the
most difficult of circumstances -- but that does not put us on the guilty side'"); Terence
Smith, "Israel Decides To Pay Families of Crash Victims; Government Move Avoids Any
Implication of Guilt," New York Times, February 26, 1973, p. A1 ; "Israelis Announce
Payments In Crash," New York Times, March 7, 1973, p. A8 ("Israeli officials have not
accepted full blame although they have stated that several mistakes were made,
including some by the French pilot of the airliner"). For false claims by apologists that
Israel "immediately accepted responsibility" and "paid reparations," see for example,
Michael Curtis, "Flight 7: Faulty Analogy," New York Times, October 2, 1 983, p. E1 8;
Martin Peretz, "Washington Diarist," New Republic, October 24, 1983, p. 50.
65. On the Bandung plane bombing, see for example, "1 1 Reds in Air Crash On
Way to Parley," New York Times, April 12, 1955, p. 1 (ten-paragraph article reporting the
Air India plane's "crash in flames" in the South China Sea, with all of its passengers
killed, including 8 Chinese officials flying from Hong Kong to the Bandung Conference);
Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjold, New York: Knopf, 1972. An excerpt (pp. 121-122 n. "**"):
On November 21, 1967, John Discoe Smith, an American defector in Moscow,
charged in an article in the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta that the C.I.A. was involved
in sabotaging the Air India plane on which Chou En-lai himself had been scheduled to
travel to Bandung. Chou had changed his plans at the last minute, but all fifteen
passengers had been killed when the plane crashed in the South China Sea off
Sarawak. Smith claimed that he had delivered a suitcase containing the explosive
mechanism to a Chinese Nationalist in Hong Kong. This mechanism was later
recovered from the wreckage, and the Hong Kong police had called the incident a
case of "carefully planned mass murder."
66. For U.S. media coverage of the Vincennes's attack, see for example, Richard
Halloran, "The Downing of Flight 655: U.S. Downs Iran Airliner Mistaken For F-14; 290
Reported Dead; A Tragedy, Reagan Says; Action Is Defended," New York Times, July
4, 1988, p. A1 (the original press report); Editorial, "A Verdict on the Vincennes," New
York Times, August 4, 1 988, p. A24 ("the shootdown still seems the type of mishap
almost impossible to avoid in the context. . . . From what is now known ... the incident
still must be seen not as a crime but as a blunder, and a tragedy").
For the eyewitness Navy Commander's revelations, see David R. Carlson
[Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Sides], "The Vincennes Incident," Proceedings: U.S.
Naval Institute, Vol. 1 1 5, No. 9, Issue 1 039, September 1 989, pp. 87-92. The
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 33
Commander of a U.S. escort frigate in the vicinity of the Vincennes at the time of the
attack denounced the official apologias as founded on lies, remarking:
When the decision was made to shoot down the Airbus, the airliner was climbing,
not diving; it was showing the proper identification friend or foe -- I.F.F. (Mode III); and
it was in the correct flight corridor from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. ... My experience
was that the conduct of Iranian military forces in the month preceding the incident
was pointedly nonthreatening. . . .
Having watched the performance of the Vincennes for a month before the
incident, my impression was clearly that an atmosphere of restraint was not her long
suit. Her actions appeared to be consistently aggressive, and had become a topic of
wardroom conversation. "Who's driving the problem in Vincennes?" was a question
asked on numerous occasions prior to 3 July. "Robo Cruiser" was the unamusing
nickname that someone jokingly came up with for her, and it stuck. My guess was
that the crew of the Vincennes felt a need to prove the viability of Aegis [its missile
system] in the Persian Gulf, and that they hankered for an opportunity to show their
stuff. . . . During the incident, the Sides was less than 20 nautical miles from the
Vincennes and under the Vincennes's tactical command. . . . The Vincennes
announced her intentions to take TN 4131 [the Iran Air plane] with missiles at 20
miles. I wondered aloud in disbelief.
David R. Carlson, '"Fog of War' Was a Cop-Out for Vincennes," Op-Ed, Los Angeles
Times, September 3, 1989, part V, p. 5 (Carlson notes that the Commander of the
Vincennes and the officer in charge of anti-air warfare were given the Legion of Merit
award for the "calm and professional atmosphere" under their command during the
period of the destruction of the Iranian airliner, and the air-warfare coordinator was given
the Navy's Commendation Medal for "heroic achievement" and "ability to maintain his
poise and confidence under fire," which enabled him to "quickly and precisely complete
the firing procedure").
See also, Jane Fritsch and Ralph Frammolino, "Vincennes Crew Gets Upbeat
Welcome Home," Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1 988, p. 1 . An excerpt:
The officers and crew of the Vincennes, the U.S. warship that mistakenly shot
down an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf last July, got a boisterous, flag-waving
welcome Monday. . . .
As the Vincennes pulled into a pier at the 32nd Street Naval Station on Monday
morning, its loudspeakers blared the theme from the movie "Chariots of Fire" and
nearby Navy ships saluted with gunfire. The reception, complete with balloons and a
Navy band playing upbeat songs, was organized by Navy officials who did not want
the Vincennes "to sneak into port," a public affairs officer said.
"U.S. disputes court's authority in Iran case," Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1991 , zone C, p.
1 (noting that Washington rejected the World Court's jurisdiction when Iran called on
the Court to order reparations); John Barry and Roger Charles, "Sea of Lies,"
Newsweek, July 1 3, 1 992, p. 29 (four years after the incident, Newsweek, which had
previously parroted the government line, broke ranks and reported the long-known facts).
67. Chomsky and Herman stress that this is the crucial point of the "Propaganda
Model" -- and the observation should be underscored here, given our extensive citation
in these footnotes to material that has been reported in the mainstream media. As
Chomsky and Herman emphasize in Manufacturing Consent {pp. xiv-xv n.14):
In criticizing media priorities and biases we often draw on the media themselves
for at least some of the facts. This affords the opportunity for a classic non sequitur,
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 34
in which the citations of facts from the mainstream press by a critic of the press is
offered as a triumphant "proof" that the criticism is self-refuting, and that media
coverage of disputed issues is indeed adequate. That the media provide some facts
about an issue, however, proves absolutely nothing about the adequacy or accuracy
of that coverage. The mass media do, in fact, literally suppress a great deal, as we
will describe in the chapters that follow. But even more important in this context is
the question of the attention given to a fact -- its placement, tone, and repetitions, the
framework of analysis within which it is presented, and the related facts that
accompany it and give it meaning (or preclude understanding).
That a careful reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it with diligence and a
skeptical eye tells us nothing about whether that fact received the attention and
context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to the reader or effectively distorted or
suppressed. What level of attention it deserved may be debatable, but there is no
merit to the pretense that because certain facts may be found in the media by a
diligent and skeptical researcher, the absence of radical bias and de facto
suppression is thereby demonstrated. A careful reader of the Soviet press could
learn facts about the war in Afghanistan that controvert the government line -- but
these inconvenient facts would not be considered in the West to demonstrate the
objectivity of the Soviet press and the adequacy of its coverage of this issue.
68. For the Freedom House study, see Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the
American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in
Vietnam and Washington, Boulder, CO: Westview, and New York: Praeger, 1977 (2
volumes)(published in cooperation with Freedom House); abridged edition, New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1 983. On the role of Freedom House as a virtual propaganda
arm of the international right wing and conservative elements of the government, see
Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: U.S. -Staged
Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador, Boston: South End,
1984, Appendix I.
69. For the enthusiastic media reaction to the Freedom House study, see for
example, Townsend Hoopes, "In the Press of Battle," Washington Post Book World,
August 7, 1977, p. G7 (lauding Big Story as a "massive, impressive analysis," "a
landmark work of high quality and fascination" that is "unlikely to receive the wide study
and reflection it deserves"); Edwin Diamond, "The Tet Media Test," New York Times
Book Review, November 27, 1977, p. 30 (calling Big Story "conscientious,"
"painstakingly thorough" and "meticulous," and praising "its valuable lessons on how
press performance can be improved").
70. For Chomsky's article on the Freedom House study, see Noam Chomsky, "10
Years After Tet: The Big Story That Got Away," More: The Media Magazine, Vol. 8, No.
6, June 1978, pp. 16f. This article also was published in an expanded version as: "The
U.S. media and the Tet offensive," Race & Class (London), Vol. 20, No. 1 , 1978, pp. 21 f.
See also, Gareth Porter, "Who Lost Vietnam?," Inquiry, February 20, 1978, pp. 6-9
(another critique of Big Story). The topic also is discussed in detail in Herman's and
Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New
York: Pantheon, 1988, ch. 5 and Appendix 3.
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 35
71 . On the indigenous nature of the opposition to both the U.S. -backed client
regime in South Vietnam and the U.S. invasion and attack on South Vietnam, see The
Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel Edition, Boston: Beacon, 1972 (parenthetical citations
in this footnote refer to this edition unless otherwise noted).
The Pentagon Papers -- the top-secret official U.S. Defense Department history of
American involvement in Indochina -- makes clear the fallacy of claims both that the
North Vietnamese government was a Soviet puppet, and that the peasant insurgency in
South Vietnam was instigated and led by the North. When the Pentagon Papers was
leaked to the press in 1 971 , one of its most remarkable revelations was that, in an
internal planning record of more than two decades, the Defense Department analysts
were able to discover only one staff paper "which treats communist reactions [to events
in Indochina] primarily in terms of the separate national interests of Hanoi [North
Vietnam], Moscow, and Peiping [China], rather than primarily in terms of an overall
communist strategy for which Hanoi is acting as an agent" (Vol. II, p. 1 07, referring to
"Special National Intelligence Estimate of November 1 961 "). Chomsky points out that it
is amusing to trace the efforts to establish that Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese
leader, was merely a Russian (or Chinese) puppet. In July 1 948, the State Department
could find "no evidence of direct link between Ho and Moscow" -- but naturally "assumes
it exists" (Vol. I, p. 5).
In the Fall of 1948, State Department intelligence found evidence of "Kremlin-
directed conspiracy ... in virtually all countries except Vietnam" -- Indochina appeared
"an anomaly" (emphasis added). The most likely explanation for this, according to U.S.
intelligence, is that "no rigid directives have been issued by Moscow" or that "a special
dispensation for the Vietnam government has been arranged in Moscow" (Vol. I, pp. 5,
34). In September 1 948, the State Department noted: "There continues to be no known
communication between the U.S.S.R. and Vietnam, although evidence is accumulating
that a radio liaison may have been established through the Tass agency in Shanghai."
American officials in Saigon added: "No evidence has yet turned up that Ho Chi Minh is
receiving current directives either from Moscow, China, or the Soviet Legation in
Bangkok" -- "It may be assumed," they conclude from this, "that Moscow feels that Ho
and his lieutenants have had sufficient training and experience and are sufficiently loyal
to be trusted to determine their day-to-day policy without supervision." By February
1949, the State Department was relieved to discover that "Moscow publications of fairly
recent date are frequently seized by the French" [France was the colonial power in
Vietnam before the U.S.] -- indicating that "satisfactory communications exist," though
their channel still remained a mystery (see U.S. Government Offset Edition of the
Pentagon Papers, Department of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-67,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1 971 , Book 8, pp. 1 48, 1 51 , 1 68 [while
censored, this edition includes valuable documents unavailable elsewhere]).
It was the same story with China: for example, in June 1 953, a National Intelligence
Estimate noted that "there has been surprisingly] little direct cooperation between local
Chinese Communists and the Viet Minh" [i.e. the Vietnamese rebels during the struggle
against France] -- "We are unable to determine whether Peiping or Moscow has ultimate
responsibility for Viet Minh policy" (Vol. I, p. 396).
Indeed, so marginal was the Soviet interest in Southeast Asia prior to the American
escalation of the war in 1 964 that the U.S. National Security Council Working Group, in
November 1964, expressed the view that "Moscow's role in Vietnam is likely to remain a
relatively minor one," noting:
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 36
Moscow's ability to influence decisions in Hanoi tends consequently to be
proportional to the North Vietnamese regime's fears of American action against it,
rising in moments of crisis and diminishing in quieter periods. Moscow's willingness
to give overt backing to Hanoi, however, seems to be in inverse proportion to the
level of threat to North Vietnam.
The Report also concludes that "Chinese Communist capabilities to augment D.R.V.
[North Vietnamese] offensive and defensive capabilities are slight" (Vol. Ill, p. 215).
Following the escalation of the U.S. attack against South Vietnam in 1964, however, the
"period of nearly three years of diligent [Soviet] detachment" came to an end, and "the
Soviet Union. . . reentered Southeast Asian politics in an active way" with a "reported
Soviet pledge in November [1 964] to increase economic and military aid to North
Vietnam" and subsequent warnings that it would support the D.N.V. in the face of the
naval attacks on its coast and U.S. air attacks in Laos (which were then approaching the
North Vietnamese border) (Vol. Ill, pp. 266-267). Furthermore, so far as was known, the
only Chinese directly engaged in Indochina were the "few Chinese Nationalists"
involved in covert operations against North Vietnam (Vol. Ill, p. 500).
Similarly unsupported were the U.S. government's claims that the South
Vietnamese peasant movement was instigated and controlled by North Vietnam. The
Pentagon Papers analyst -- discussing the origins of the 1 958 South Vietnamese
insurgency against the U.S. -client Diem regime, which was imposed as their
government after the 1954 Geneva Accords ~ notes that "no direct links" had been
established between Hanoi and the Southern Vietnamese insurgents in the 1956-1959
period, though still he tends, rather cautiously, towards the view that "some form of
D.R.V. [North Vietnamese] apparatus" may have "originated and controlled the
insurgency" during those years (Vol. I, pp. 34, 243).
In the end, the Pentagon Papers analyst limits himself to the conclusion that
"whether or not the rebellion against Diem in South Vietnam proceeded independently
of, or even contrary to directions from Hanoi through 1958, Hanoi moved thereafter to
capture the revolution" -- and the evidence that Hanoi did in fact "capture the revolution"
is "the rapid growth of the N.L.F." after 1 960, which, the analyst reasoned, "is a further
indication that the Hanoi-directed communist party apparatus had been engaged to the
fullest in the initial organization and subsequent development of the N.L.F." in South
Vietnam [the "N.L.F.," or National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, was the popularly-
based anti-colonial indigenous revolutionary movement, the so-called "Viet Cong"] (Vol.
I, p. 265). Douglas Pike, a former U.S. foreign service officer and professor, using similar
reasoning, offered as proof that Ho Chi Minh must be the N.L.F. 's "master planner" the
fact that the N.L.F. "projected a social construction program of such scope and ambition
that of necessity it must have been created in Hanoi" ~ see Douglas Pike, Viet Cong:
The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,
Cambridge: M.l.T. Press, 1966, p. 76. Chomsky remarks: in the face of such powerful
argumentation, one can only lapse into silence.
The Pentagon Papers also demonstrate conclusively that when the United States
undertook its major escalation of the war in February 1 965, it knew of no regular North
Vietnamese military units in South Vietnam. In fact, the first reference in the U.S.
government's internal planning record to regular North Vietnamese units being present
in South Vietnam is in a C.I.A./D.I.A. [Defense Intelligence Agency] Memorandum of
April 21 , 1 965, which "reflected the acceptance into the enemy order of battle of one
regiment [sic] of the 325th P.A.V.N. Division said to be located in Kontum Province." As
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 37
the Pentagon Papers analyst notes, this was "most ominous ... a sobering harbinger of
things to come" -- not, however, a continuation of what had come before, and what had
supposedly been the basis for the U.S. escalation: i.e. the U.S. government's January
1965 allegation that the entire 325th Division had entered South Vietnam, thereby
entitling the U.S. to respond under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to "aggression by
means of an armed attack" (Vol. Ill, p. 438). Moreover, on July 2, 1965, the Assistant
Secretary of Defense was still concerned with the possibility that there might be North
Vietnamese forces in or near South Vietnam -- as he stated, "I am quite concerned about
the increasing probability that there are regular P.A.V.N. forces either in the II Corps area
[in South Vietnam] or in Laos directly across the border from II Corps" (Vol. IV, p. 291 ) --
and on July 1 4, 1 965, the Joint Chiefs of Staff included only one regiment of the 325th
P.A.V.N. Division in their estimate of the total of 48,500 "Viet Cong organized combat
units" (Vol. IV, p. 295). By comparison, note that the Honolulu Meeting of April 20, 1 965,
had recommended that American forces be raised to 82,000, supplemented with 7,250
Korean and Australian troops (2,000 Koreans had been dispatched on January 8, 1965,
and at the time there were 33,500 U.S. troops in the country) (Vol. Ill, p. 706). In June,
the United States decided "to pour U.S. troops into the country as fast as they could be
deployed" (Vol. II, p. 362). And in mid-July, probably by July 17, President Johnson
approved the request that the United States troop level be raised to 1 75,000 (Vol. IV, pp.
297, 299). Chomsky comments: in light of these facts alone, the claim that the United
States was defending South Vietnam from an armed attack when it dramatically
escalated the war in 1 965 is merely ludicrous.
Recall, for example, that April 1 965 -- the date of the first mention in the internal
record of a lone North Vietnamese regiment, not a "Division," in South Vietnam -- was
two months after the initiation of regular and intensive U.S. bombing of North and South
Vietnam; it was eight months after the U.S. bombed strategic targets in North Vietnam in
"retaliation" for the Tonkin Gulf incident [in which the Johnson administration falsely
claimed that two U.S. destroyers were fired upon by North Vietnamese torpedo boats];
and it was fourteen months after the earlier escalation of U.S. military pressure against
North Vietnam on February 1 , 1 964. Furthermore, by the end of 1 964, the U.S. troop
level had reached 23,000, and the U.S. military by that point had been directly engaged
in combat operations in Vietnam for three full years (Vol. II, p. 1 60). Moreover, the
Johnson administration's "aggression from the North" thesis quickly was devastated by
analyses of its White Paper of 1 965 -- see for example, Editorial, "White Paper on
Vietnam," New Republic, March 13, 1 965, p. 5 (noting that the White Paper only names
six North Vietnamese infiltrators, and pointing out that most "infiltrators" from the North
were actually Southerners returning to their homes); I.F. Stone, "A Reply to the White
Paper," I.F. Stone's Weekly, March 8, 1965, p. 1 (reporting, among other things, that less
than two and one-half percent of weapons captured by the U.S. were of Communist
origin).
Thus, the fundamental problem in establishing the United States' case was that
American military intervention preceded and was always far more extensive than the
North Vietnamese involvement ~ leaving aside the question of the relative rights of North
Vietnamese and Americans to be fighting in South Vietnam after the unification
provisions of the Geneva Agreements were subverted. In general, the U.S. leadership
knew that "The basic elements of Communist strength in South Vietnam remain
indigenous," with a corresponding "ability to recruit locally"; and it also recognized that
the N.L.F. "enjoys some status as a nationalist movement," whereas the U.S. -backed
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 38
military government of South Vietnam "is composed primarily of technicians and has
about it a caretaker aura." As the National Security Council Working Group on Vietnam
concluded: the Saigon government's "success so far in avoiding open mass opposition
is encouraging, but even if the government can avoid a direct public confrontation, the
lack of positive support from various key segments of the populace seems certain to
hamper its effectiveness" (Vol. Ill, pp. 651-656, N.S.C. Working Group on Vietnam, Sec.
1 : "Intelligence Assessment: The Situation in Vietnam," November 24, 1964, Document
240).
By February 1 966, the American force level passed 200,000, and it was alleged
that 1 1 ,000 North Vietnamese troops were in South Vietnam. By December 1 967, the
American force level was approaching half a million, and it was alleged that 50,000 to
60,000 North Vietnamese troops were in the South (about the same number as the force
of South Koreans that were fighting for the United States). There also were Chinese
forces -- namely, mercenaries from Chiang Kai-Shek's army introduced by Kennedy and
Johnson to fight on the U.S. side, six companies of combat infantry by April 1 965.
Furthermore, North Vietnamese regular units, estimated by the Pentagon at about
50,000 by 1968, were largely in peripheral areas; in contrast, U.S. mercenary forces
were rampaging in the heartland of South Vietnam, as was the U.S. military itself.
Korean mercenaries reached 50,000 by 1969, along with another 20,000 "Free World,"
and over a half-million U.S. troops by that point. See George Kahin, Intervention: How
America Became Involved in Vietnam, New York: Knopf, 1 986, pp. 207-208, 307-308,
333-336; Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers, Hanover, NH: University Press of New
England, 1977, pp. 37-38; Chester Cooper, The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam, New
York: Dodd, Mead, 1970, pp. 266-267, 277; Theodore Draper, Abuse of Power, New
York: Viking, 1966, pp. 73-80.
Chomsky notes that none of these exposures made a dent on the typical
mainstream editorial, news article, column, or presentation of administration handouts.
Even after the Pentagon Papers was leaked -- vindicating the hardest of hard-line dove
analyses of the real source of the aggression, locating it firmly in Washington -- the
mythical truth about North Vietnamese aggression held firm in the U.S. press. Chomsky
adds that some have been misled in their analysis of the media in the period by the fact
that one journal, the New York Review of Books, was open to dissident opinion during
the peak years of popular protest in the late 1 960s: those doors closed in the early
1 970s, and there were few other examples.
72. On U.S. intelligence's pessimistic assessment after the Tet Offensive, see for
example, Document #1 32, "General Wheeler's [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]
Report to President Johnson After the Tet Offensive," in the New York Times edition of
the Pentagon Papers, New York: Bantam, 1 971 . An excerpt (pp. 61 5-61 7):
The enemy is operating with relative freedom in the countryside, probably
recruiting heavily and no doubt infiltrating N.V.A. [North Vietnamese army] units and
personnel. His recovery is likely to be rapid. . . . R.V.N.A.F. [the U.S. -client South
Vietnamese army] is now in a defensive posture around towns and cities and there is
concern about how well they will bear up under sustained pressure.
The initial attack [in the Tet Offensive] nearly succeeded in a dozen places, and
defeat in those places was only averted by the timely reaction of U.S. forces. In
short, it was a very near thing. There is no doubt that the R.D. Program [the so-
called civilian "pacification" program] has suffered a severe set back. ... To a large
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 39
extent the V.C. now control the countryside. . . . Under these circumstances, we
must be prepared to accept some reverses.
Note that at the time of the Tet Offensive, the Boston Globe surveyed 39 major American
newspapers -- with a combined circulation of 22 million people -- and found that not a
single one of them had called for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. See Min S. Yee,
"Vietnam: The U.S. press and its agony of appraisal," Boston Globe, February 18, 1968,
p. 2A.
73. At the left-liberal end of the mainstream spectrum, attitudes towards the
Vietnam War have ranged from those expressed by Anthony Lewis [the argument
against the war "was that the United States had misunderstood the cultural and political
forces at work in Indochina -- that it was in a position where it could not impose a
solution except at a price too costly to itself"; see "Ghosts," New York Times, December
27, 1 979, p. A23] to those of Irving Howe ["We opposed the war because we believed,
as Stanley Hoffman has written, that 'Washington could "save" the people of South
Vietnam and Cambodia from communism only at a cost that made a mockery of the word
"save ; see "The Crucifixion of Cambodia," Dissent, Fall 1979, pp. 391 f at p. 394]. In
short, the argument against the war was either the cost to us or the cost to them -- as we
determine it. In contrast, Chomsky notes, we opposed the Russian invasions of
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan because aggression is wrong, whatever its
costs to either party.
74. For Sheehan's book, see Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann
and America in Vietnam, New York: Random House, 1988.
75. For discussion of Vann's unpublished and untitled memorandum, which was
circulated within the military in 1 965 and given personally by Vann to Professor Alex
Carey of the University of New South Wales in Australia, see Noam Chomsky, For
Reasons of State, New York: Pantheon, 1 973, pp. 232-233. Vann's premises were that
a social revolution was in process in South Vietnam, "primarily identified with the
National Liberation Front," and that "a popular political base for the [U.S. client]
Government of South Vietnam does not now exist." "The dissatisfaction of the agrarian
population . . . today is largely expressed through alliance with the N.L.F." "The existing
government is oriented toward the exploitation of the rural and lower class urban
populations." Therefore, since it is "naive" to expect that "an unsophisticated, relatively
illiterate, rural population [will] recognize and oppose the evils of Communism," Vann
called for the United States to institute "effective political indoctrination of the population"
under an American-maintained "autocratic government."
76. On the main tradition of "democratic" thought in the West, see the text above
this footnote in U.P., and footnotes 39, 40 and 41 of this chapter.
77. For the American military leadership's statements of concern about a domestic
crisis in the U.S., see the Pentagon Papers [the top-secret official U.S. Defense
Department history of American involvement in Indochina, leaked to the press in 1971],
Senator Gravel Edition, Boston: Beacon, 1972 (parenthetical citations in this footnote
refer to this edition).
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 40
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, considering additional U.S. troop deployments to Vietnam
after the Tet Offensive in 1 968, noted that they had to make sure that "sufficient forces
would still be available for civil disorder control" (Vol. IV, p. 541 ). Similarly, a Pentagon
Working Group warned in a top secret Defense Department memorandum in March
1968 that increased force levels in Vietnam would lead to "growing disaffection
accompanied, as it certainly will be, by increased defiance of the draft and growing
unrest in the cities," and ran "great risks of provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented
proportions" (Vol. IV, p. 564). A classified internal document acknowledged that "[t]he
massive anti-war demonstration organized in Washington on October 21 [1 967]" and the
"massive march on the Pentagon" were a serious problem for the administration,
commenting: "the sight of thousands of peaceful demonstrators being confronted by
troops in battle gear cannot have been reassuring to the country as a whole nor to the
President in particular" (Vol. IV, pp. 21 7, 1 97). The Assistant Secretary of Defense for
International Security Affairs, John McNaughton, noted in secret that escalation of the
land war beyond South Vietnam might lead to massive civil disobedience within the
United States, particularly in view of opposition to the war among young people, the
underprivileged, the intelligentsia, and women (Vol. IV, pp. 481 -482, 478). He added
(Vol. IV, p. 484):
[A]n important but hard-to-measure cost is domestic and world opinion: There may be
a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the
United States to go. The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or
seriously injuring 1000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny
backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not
a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a distortion in the American national
consciousness and in the world image of the United States - especially if the
damage to North Vietnam is complete enough to be "successful."
Note that here McNaughton is referring only to casualties from the U.S. attack on North
Vietnam ~ not to the much larger attack on the South.
See also, for example, Thomas Oliphant, "Harrington says admiral discussed N.
Viet invasion," Boston Globe, April 1 5, 1 972, p. 1 (reporting the testimony of Admiral
Thomas Moorer before the House Armed Services Committee that "if domestic restraints
were relaxed the U.S. would have the option of bombing Haiphong harbor in North
Vietnam and launching amphibious assaults behind North Vietnamese lines," and
quoting Congressman Michael Harrington that the "restraints" Moorer had in mind were
"the activities of the peace movement and of the press"); David Halberstam, The Best
and the Brightest, New York: Random House, 1 969. An excerpt (p. 653):
In late March, Johnson summoned his Senior Advisory Group on Vietnam, a blue-
chip Establishment group. These were the great names of the Cold War: McCloy,
Acheson, Arthur Dean, Mac Bundy, Douglas Dillon, Robert Murphy. And over a
period of two days they quietly let him know that the Establishment - yes, Wall Street
- had turned on the war; it was hurting us more than it was helping us, it had all
gotten out of hand, and it was time to bring it back to proportion. It was hurting the
economy, dividing the country, turning the youth against the country's best traditions.
Great universities, their universities, were being destroyed. It was time to turn it
around, to restore some balance. At one of the briefings of the Wise Men it was
Arthur Goldberg, much mocked by some of the others, who almost single-handedly
destroyed the military demand for 205,000 more troops.
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 41
78. On the developments within the American army, see for example, David
Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today, Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1975.
79. On the commonplace nature of My Lai-type massacres, see for example, Krista
Maeots, "Vietnam has many My Lais -- Canadian M.D.," Ottawa Citizen, January 12,
1 970, p. 1 3. Dr. Alje Vennema, director of a Canadian anti-tuberculosis hospital in
Quang Ngai Province near My Lai until August 1 968 -- he left because he felt that he
could do nothing useful there anymore, since "My service was futile" ~ reported that he
knew of the My Lai slayings at once, but did nothing "because it was nothing new." He
explained:
There was a massacre at Son-Tra in February of 1 968, and another incident during
the summer in the Mo-Duc district. ... I had heard this type of story many times
before, however, and had spoken to U.S. and Canadian officials about the senseless
killings of civilians that were going on. . . . They were being talked about among the
Vietnamese people, but no more than other incidents. . . . [T]here were 600 foreign
correspondents in the country at that time. The story was effectively suppressed at
the time.
For similar reports, see for example, U.P.I., "Colonel Says Every Large Combat
Unit in Vietnam Has a Mylai," New York Times, May 25, 1971 , p. 13 (Colonel Oran K.
Henderson, the highest-ranking officer to have faced court-martial charges for the My Lai
massacre, explained that "every unit of brigade size has its Mylai hidden some place,"
although such incidents remained undisclosed because "every unit doesn't have a
Ridenhour [the Vietnam veteran who went public with the My Lai massacre more than a
year after it occurred]"); "A Doctor Reports from South Vietnam -- Testimony by Erich
Wulff," in John Duffett, ed., Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell
International War Crimes Tribunal, New York: OHare, 1968, pp. 522-536 (testimony of
Erich Wulff before Bertrand Russell's Tribunal on War Crimes in Vietnam in 1967, with
descriptions of torturing of prisoners, creation of "free fire zones," and the destruction of
the village of Phu Loc); Bertrand Russell, War Crimes in Vietnam, London: Allen and
Unwin, 1 967 (recounting almost unbearable narratives of torture and violence); Jonathan
Schell, The Military Half: An Account of Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin, New
York: Knopf, 1968 (describing the war in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin Provinces in
unforgettable detail); Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, New York: Morrow,
1990 (one of the best histories of what really happened in Vietnam).
80. For Life magazine's story on My Lai, see Hal Wingo, "The Massacre at Mylai,"
Life, December 5, 1969, pp. 36f. See also, Seymour Hersh, My Lai 4: a report on the
massacre and its aftermath, New York: Random House, 1970; Seymour M. Hersh,
Cover-up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4, New York:
Random House, 1972; Richard L. Strout, "Tragic human costs of war," Christian Science
Monitor, November 24, 1 969, p. 1 . An excerpt:
American press self-censorship thwarted Mr. Ridenhour's disclosures [about My Lai]
for a year. "No one wanted to go into it," his agent said of telegrams sent to Life,
Look, and Newsweek magazines outlining allegations. . . . Except for the recent
antiwar march in Washington the event might not have been publicized. In
connection with the march a news offshoot (Dispatch News Service) of the left-wing
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 42
Institute of Policy Studies of this city aggressively told and marketed the story to
approximately 30 United States and Canadian newspapers.
81 . On the Piers Commission's findings, see for example, Seymour Hersh, "The
Army's Secret Inquiry Describes a 2nd Massacre, Involving 90 Civilians," New York
Times, June 5, 1972, p. 10.
Few winced when the New York Times published a think-piece from My Lai on the
fifth anniversary of the massacre, and noted that the village and region remained "silent
and unsafe," though the Americans were still "trying to make it safe" by relentless
bombardment and shelling. The reporter then quoted villagers who accused the U.S. of
killing many people, adding philosophically: "They are in no position to appreciate what
the name My Lai means to Americans." See A. P., "Five years later, My Lai is a no man's
town, silent and unsafe," New York Times, March 16, 1974, p. 2.
82. On South Africa's black soldiers, see for example, Kurt Campbell, "Marching for
Pretoria" [cover title: "The Warriors of Apartheid: Inside South Africa's Military
Establishment"], Boston Globe Magazine, March 1 , 1987, pp. 16f.
Understanding Power: Chapter One Footnotes -- 43
Chapter Two
Teach-in: Over Coffee
1 . On post-World War II U.S. and Soviet military presence, see for example, Center
for Defense Information, "Soviet Geopolitical Momentum: Myth or Menace? Trends of
Soviet Influence Around the World From 1 945 to 1 980," Defense Monitor, January 1 980,
p. 5 (tracing Soviet influence on a country-by-country basis since World War II, and
concluding that Soviet power peaked in the late 1 950s and by 1 979 "the Soviets were
influencing only 6 percent of the world's population and 5 percent of the world's G.N. P.,
exclusive of the Soviet Union"); Senate Subcommittee on Security Agreements and
Commitments Abroad, Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, Report to the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, December 21 , 1 970, 91 st Congress, 2nd Session,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970, C.I.S.# 70-S382-17, p. 3 (pointing
out that the post-World War II U.S. global military presence reached over 3,000 foreign
military bases "virtually surrounding both the Soviet Union and Communist China");
Ruth LegerSivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1981, Leesburg, VA: World
Priorities, 1 981 , p. 8 (study counting at least 1 25 military conflicts since the end of World
War II, 95 percent of them occurring in the Third World and in most cases involving
foreign forces, with "western powers accounting for 79 percent of the interventions,
communist for 6 percent").
2. For Gaddis's justification of his use of the "containment" concept, see John
Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American
National Security Policy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1 982. The exact words (p.
vii n."*"; emphasis in original):
The term "containment" poses certain problems, implying as it does a consistently
defensive orientation in American policy. One can argue at length about whether
Washington's approach to the world since 1945 has been primarily defensive ~ I tend
to think it has ~ but the argument is irrelevant for the purposes of this book. What is
important here is that American leaders consistently perceived themselves as
responding to rather than initiating challenges to the existing international order. For
this reason, it seems to me valid to treat the idea of containment as the central theme
of postwar national security policy.
3. For Gaddis's reference to "economic considerations," see John Lewis Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security
Policy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1 982. The exact words (pp. 356-357;
emphasis in original):
What is surprising is the primacy that has been accorded economic considerations in
shaping strategies of containment, to the exclusion of other considerations. One
would not expect to find, in initiatives directed so self-consciously at the world at
large, such decisive but parochial concerns. ... To a remarkable degree,
containment has been the product, not so much of what the Russians have done, or
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 1
of what has happened elsewhere in the world, but of internal forces operating within
the United States.
4. For National Security Council [N.S.C.] 68, of April 14, 1950, see Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1950, Vol. I, Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1 977, pp. 234-292. The exact words (section VI.B.2, pp. 261 , 258):
[T]here are grounds for predicting that the United States and other free nations will
within a period of a few years at most experience a decline in economic activity of
serious proportions unless more positive governmental programs are developed than
are now available. . . . Industrial production declined by 10 percent between the first
quarter of 1948 and the last quarter of 1949, and by approximately one-fourth
between 1944 and 1949. In March 1950 there were approximately 4,750,000
unemployed, as compared to 1,070,000 in 1943 and 670,000 in 1944. The gross
national product declined slowly in 1949 from the peak reached in 1948 ($262 billion
in 1948 to an annual rate of $256 billion in the last six months of 1949), and in terms
of constant prices declined by about 20 percent between 1 944 and 1 948.
The document then proposes a build-up of "economic and military strength" through
rearmament (pp. 258, 286):
With a high level of economic activity, the United States could soon attain a gross
national product of $300 billion per year, as was pointed out in the President's
Economic Report (January 1950). Progress in this direction would permit, and might
itself be aided by, a build-up of the economic and military strength of the United
States and the free world; furthermore, if a dynamic expansion of the economy were
achieved, the necessary build-up could be accomplished without a decrease in the
national standard of living because the required resources could be obtained by
siphoning off a part of the annual increment in the gross national product. . . .
One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the
American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can
provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while
simultaneously providing a high standard of living. After allowing for price changes,
personal consumption expenditures rose by about one-fifth between 1939 and 1944,
even though the economy had in the meantime increased the amount of resources
going into Government use by $60-$65 billion (in 1939 prices).
For commentary, see for example, Fred Block, "Economic Instability and Military
Strength: The Paradoxes of the 1 950 Rearmament Decision," Politics and Society, Vol.
10, No. 1, 1980, pp. 35-58; Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security,
the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992,
ch. 8. See also chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 7 to 1 0.
5. On the decision to increase military spending in the wake of the Marshall Plan's
failure, see for example, Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of
McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-1948, New
York: New York University Press, 1985, pp. 329-334. An excerpt (pp. 330, 334):
Despite the rapid success of the aid program in inducing the recovery of western
Europe's productive capacity, unsatisfactory progress was made with respect to the
problem of increasing the dollar earnings of western European economies. In 1949
European exports to both the United States and Latin America actually declined. In
this context Britain suffered another economic crisis and in September 1949 was
forced to devalue the pound by 30 per cent; in subsequent months all other Marshall
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 2
Plan countries followed suit. By the end of the year both [the Council of Economic
Advisors] and other federal agencies came to the conclusion that the [Committee for
European Economic Cooperation] had asserted in 1948: the E.R.P. [European
Recovery Program, the "Marshall Plan,"] offered no prospect for the countries of
Europe to balance their payments through exports to the U.S. . . .
The decision to shift the emphasis of American policy toward Europe from
economic aid to military aid occurred within the context of the recognized failure of
the politico-commercial strategy that was an essential component of the E.R.P. This
failure left the kind of rearmament program proposed by N.S.C.-68 as the sole means
for building the Atlantic political community to which U.S. policy was consistently
committed after 1 946.
William Borden, The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign Economic Policy and
Japanese Trade Recovery, 1947-1955, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984,
especially pp. 12, 27, 50-60, 245-246 n.75 (reaching the same general conclusion; also
pointing out that "few dollars changed hands internationally under the aid programs, the
dollars went to American producers and the goods were sold to the European public" in
local currencies).
See also, Melvyn Leffler, "The United States and the Strategic Dimensions of the
Marshall Plan," Diplomatic History, Summer 1988, pp. 277-306 at pp. 277-278
(overcoming the dollar gap "which had originally prompted the Marshall Plan" required a
restoration of the triangular trade patterns whereby Europe earned dollars through U.S.
purchase of raw materials from its colonies; hence European, and Japanese, access to
Third World markets and raw materials was an essential component of the general
strategic planning, and a necessary condition for fulfillment of the general purposes of
the Marshall Plan, which were to "benefit the American economy," to "redress the
European balance of power" in favor of U.S. allies ~ state and class -- and to "enhance
American national security," where "national security . . . meant the control of raw
materials, industrial infrastructure, skilled manpower, and military bases"). And see
chapter 3 of IS. P. and its footnotes 3, 7, 8, 9, 1 and 1 1 .
6. For Gaddis's characterization of the 1 91 8 invasion of the Soviet Union, see John
Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1 987, pp. 1 0f, 21 . His exact words (pp. 10-11):
This debate over the motives for intervention misses an important point, though,
which is that Wilson and his allies saw their actions in a defensive rather than an
offensive context. Intervention in Russia took place in response to a profound and
potentially far-reaching intervention by the new Soviet government in the internal
affairs, not just of the West, but of virtually every other country in the world: I refer
here, of course to the Revolution's challenge ~ which could hardly have been more
categorical ~ to the very survival of the capitalist order. . . . From this perspective,
the interesting question regarding Western intervention in Russia after the Bolshevik
Revolution is why it was such a half-hearted, poorly planned, and ultimately
ineffectual enterprise, given the seriousness of the threat it sought to counter.
7. For Secretary of State Lansing's warning, see "Lansing Papers, 1 914-1 920,"
Vol. II, Foreign Relations of the United States, Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1 940, p. 348. His exact words (referring to a 1 91 8 communication from the
Bolsheviks to "the peoples and governments of the Allied countries"):
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 3
The document is an appeal to the proletariat of all countries, to the ignorant and
mentally deficient, who by their numbers are urged to become masters. Here seems
to me to lie a very real danger in view of the present social unrest throughout the
world.
For a similar warning by Lansing made elsewhere, see John Lewis Gaddis,
Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History, New York:
Knopf, 1978, p. 105:
[Bolshevism's appeal is] to the unintelligent and brutish elements of mankind to take
from the intellectual and successful their rights and possessions and to reduce them
to a state of slavery. . . . Bolshevism is the most hideous and monstrous thing that
the human mind has ever conceived.
See also, Lloyd Gardner, Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to
Revolution, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 242 (on President Wilson's
fears about Bolshevism's potential effect upon American blacks).
For a study of Wilson's intervention in Russia, see David S. Fogelsang, America's
Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
For sources on the Red Scare of 1 91 9 in the U.S., see footnote 6 of chapter 8 of
U.P. Chomsky remarks: "The Red Scare was strongly backed by the press and elites
generally until they came to see that their own interests would be harmed as the right-
wing frenzy got out of hand -- in particular, the anti-immigrant hysteria, which threatened
the reserve of cheap labor" [Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic
Societies, Boston: South End, 1 989, p. 1 89).
8. On popular reform under the Sandinistas, see for example, Latin American
Studies Association, The Electoral Process in Nicaragua: The Report of the Latin
American Studies Association Delegation to Observe the Nicaraguan General Election
of November 4, 1984, Latin American Studies Association Official Publication,
November 1 9, 1 984, pp. 4-7 (summarizing the Sandinista government's priorities and
why it gained popular support during the first half of the 1 980s; noting that the Sandinista
agenda "defined national priorities according to 'the logic of the majority,' which meant
that Nicaragua's poor majority would have access to, and be the primary beneficiaries of,
public programs"); Joseph Collins et al., What Difference Could a Revolution Make?:
Food and Farming in the New Nicaragua, San Francisco: Institute for Food and
Development Policy, 1985; Dianna Melrose, Nicaragua: The Threat of a Good
Example?, Oxford (U.K.): Oxfam [British charitable relief and development organization],
1985 (preface 1989). An excerpt (pp. 1, 13-14):
[Oxfam's] long-term development work is most likely to succeed where
governments are genuinely committed to the needs of the poor majority. Rarely is
this the case. Nicaragua stands out because of the positive climate for development
based on people's active participation, which Oxfam has encountered over the past
five years [i.e. since 1979 under the Sandinista government]. . . . [S]ince 1979 the
scope for development has been enormous, with remarkable progress achieved in
health, literacy and a more equitable distribution of resources. . . .
The new Government of National Reconstruction stressed its desire to develop a
mixed economy and political pluralism in a country that had no tradition of democracy
or free elections. Great importance was also attached to achieving a high degree of
national self-sufficiency and an independent, non-aligned foreign policy. This
radically new focus of social policy in Nicaragua towards the needs of the poor
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 4
presented enormous scope for Oxfam's work. In addition to locally-based projects,
Oxfam was now able to support nationwide initiatives to tackle problems rooted in
poverty. The concept of actively involving people in development through community
organisations is neither new nor radical, but widely recognised to be a precondition
for successful development. However, as the World Bank points out: "Governments
. . . vary greatly in the commitment of their political leadership to improving the
condition of the people and encouraging their active participation in the development
process." From Oxfam's experience of working in seventy-six developing countries,
Nicaragua was to prove exceptional in the strength of that Government commitment.
This report documents a wide range of Sandinista reforms (pp. 1 4-26). They included a
decline in the national illiteracy rate from 53 percent to 13 percent; popular education
collectives established in 17,000 communities; 127 percent more schools, 61 percent
more teachers, and 55 percent more children at primary school; a national program of
mass inoculations against diseases which resulted in, among other successes, a 98
percent fall in new malaria cases; agrarian reform, including compensation for
expropriated land, since up to a third of arable land (mainly on large estates) was idle or
under-used; 49,661 families in a total population of three million receiving titles to land
between late 1981 and late 1984; and an 8 percent increase in overall agricultural
production between 1979 and 1983. The Inter-American Development Bank
summarized: "Nicaragua has made noteworthy progress in the social sector, which is
laying a solid foundation for long-term socio-economic development." As the New
England Journal of Medicine put it: "In just three years, more has been done in most
areas of social welfare than in fifty years of dictatorship under the Somoza family." See
also footnote 52 of chapter 1 of U.P.
For the World Bank's 1 980 prediction that it would take at least a decade for
Nicaragua to reach the economic level that it had in 1 977 -- because of the damaging
economic consequences of the popular insurrection against the U.S. -client dictator
Somoza's regime -- see Michael E. Conroy, "Economic Aggression as an Instrument of
Low-Intensity Warfare," in Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas: The
Undeclared War on Nicaragua, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987, pp. 57-79, especially p.
67 (citing "Nicaragua: The Challenge of Reconstruction," Washington: International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development [the "World Bank"], October 9, 1981 , p. 1 1).
See also, Michael E. Conroy, "Economic Legacy and Policies: Performance and
Critique," in Thomas Walker, ed., Nicaragua: The First Five Years, New York: Praeger,
1985, pp. 232-233.
9. On the "threat of a good example" as a preoccupation of U.S. foreign policy, see
chapter 5 of U.P. and especially its footnote 32, and also its footnotes 7, 8 and 1 08. See
also chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 20; and footnote 8 of this chapter.
1 0. A search on the Nexis computer database of newspapers and journals dating
from the early 1980s for every instance in which the root-term "invade!" (i.e. including
"invades," "invaded," etc.) was published within ten words of "South Vietnam" retrieved
a total of two direct statements in American newspapers and journals that the U.S.
invaded South Vietnam. One was by Chomsky in an interview -- see Eric Black, "Noam
Chomsky: He's got a world on his mind," Star Tribune (Minneapolis), April 1 0, 1 997, p.
1 7A. The other appeared in a letter to the editor from a reader in Lakeland, Florida -- see
Fred Mercer, "U.S. caused 'Nam war," Letter, The Ledger (Lakeland, FL), December 1 ,
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 5
1995, p. A14. In addition, the Washington Post quoted the phrase one time in an article
on North Vietnamese propaganda and reeducation camps; and the British news-wire
Reuters and the British Broadcasting Corporation transmitted stories which utilized the
terms in this manner. See Robert G. Kaiser, "Surviving Communist 'Reeducation
Camp,'" Washington Post, May 15, 1994, p. A33; and, for example, John Chalmers,
"Vietnam's party conclaves map turbulent history," Reuters, June 27, 1996.
1 1 . For Gaddis's characterization of Dienbienphu, see John Lewis Gaddis, The
Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1 987, pp. 1 29f.
12. For Bundy's statement about Dienbienphu, see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and
Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years, New York: Random House,
1 988, pp. 260-270 at pp. 260-261 .
13. On the indigenous opposition which confronted the French and then the U.S. in
Vietnam, see footnote 71 of chapter 1 of U.P.
14. On Nicaragua's 1984 election, see for example, Latin American Studies
Association, The Electoral Process in Nicaragua: The Report of the Latin American
Studies Association Delegation to Observe the Nicaraguan General Election of
November 4, 1984, Latin American Studies Association Official Publication, November
19, 1984; Canadian Church and Human Rights Delegation, Nicaragua 1984:
Democracy, Elections and War, Toronto: Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in
Latin America, 1984; Abraham Brumberg, "'Sham' and 'Farce' in Nicaragua?," Dissent,
Spring 1985, pp. 226-237.
On El Salvador's 1982 election, see for example, Edward S. Herman and Frank
Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: U.S. -Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic,
Vietnam, and El Salvador, Boston: South End, 1984, ch. 4.
15. On repression in El Salvador and Guatemala versus that in Nicaragua under
the Sandinistas, see for example, Americas Watch, Human Rights in Nicaragua 1986,
New York: Americas Watch Committee, February 1 987, chs. 1 , 2 and 6. An excerpt (pp.
140-141,158-159):
One illustration of the Reagan Administration's employment of human rights
rhetoric in its war against the Sandinistas is a joint State Department-Defense
Department document that was distributed to those who attended the White House
ceremony on December 10, 1986 marking International Human Rights Day. Printed
on glossy paper with a silver cover and with four color illustrations (a format that
stands out in contrast to U.S. government documents on human rights in other parts
of the world) it is titled "The Challenge to Democracy in Central America." At page
28, it cites the following statement approvingly: "In the American continent, there is no
regime more barbaric and bloody, no regime that violates human rights in a manner
more constant and permanent, than the Sandinista regime." Whatever the sins of the
Sandinistas - and they are real ~ this is nonsense. . . .
Between 40,000 and 50,000 Salvadoran civilians were murdered by government
forces and death squads allied to them during the 1980s. A similar number died
during [the U.S. client] Somoza's last year or so in Nicaragua, mostly in
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 6
indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population by the National Guard. The number
of civilian noncombatants killed by the armed forces in Guatemala during the 1 980s
cannot be known, but it is probably the highest in the hemisphere. ... As to
Nicaragua, taking into account all of the civilian noncombatant deaths attributable to
government forces in the more than seven years since the Sandinistas consolidated
power, it is difficult to count a total of more than 300 ... of which the largest number
of victims were Miskito Indians on the Atlantic Coast in 1981 and 1982. . . .
[Furthermore], Americas Watch knows of two cases of [Nicaraguan] political
prisoners in the sense in which that term is used in the United States . . . [one of
these] had been arrested for evading the military draft. ... He was subsequently
released without charges and is not presently serving in the military. . . . Also at this
time, Amnesty International has no currently adopted "prisoner of conscience" in
Nicaragua under the Sandinistas.
See also footnotes 8, 1 6 and 1 7 of this chapter; footnote 1 3 of chapter 1 of U.P.; footnote
48 of chapter 5 of U.P.; and footnote 54 of chapter 8 of U.P.
The true nature of the U.S. -client regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala should be
fully appreciated. See for example, Reverend Daniel Santiago [Catholic priest working
in El Salvador], "The Aesthetics of Terror, The Hermeneutics of Death," America [Jesuit
journal], Vol. 1 62, No. 1 1 , March 24, 1 990, pp. 292-295. An excerpt:
I have heard Tonita tell her story at least a dozen times. She has recounted the
horror for each delegation of North Americans who visited the refugee camp on the
outskirts of San Salvador. With so many tellings, Tonita's testimony has acquired a
repetitive quality. When translated and transcribed, it is somewhat unbelievable.
What is convincing, however, is not the story itself, but Tonita's visceral reaction to
each telling. Her tears are not the stage tears of an actress; the lines of pain that
cross her wrinkled face have not been enhanced with makeup. Tonita's story is quite
believable and that is the problem.
Tonita is a peasant from Santa Lucia, a rural village near the volcano of San
Vicente in El Salvador. One day, two years ago, at 1 1 :00 A.M., Tonita left her one-
room home to carry lunch to her husband, Chepe, and their two teen-age sons who
were cutting firewood on the volcano. She left her three smallest children ~ an 18-
month-old daughter, a 3-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter - in the care of her
sister and mother. . . . Entering the house [on her return], Tonita was greeted by the
grisly spectacle of a feast macabre. Seated around a small table in the middle of her
house were her mother, sister and three children. The decapitated heads of all five
had been placed in front of each torso, their hands arranged on top, as if each body
was stroking its own head. This had proven to be difficult in the case of the youngest
daughter. The difficulty had been overcome by nailing the hands onto the head. The
hammer had been left on the table. The floor and table were awash with blood. In the
very center of the table was a large plastic bowl filled with blood; the air hung heavy
with its sweet, cloying smell. Tonita's neighbors had fled when the Salvadoran
National Guard began their killing. The Guardia had not tried to stop the people from
fleeing and, indeed, they encouraged it. One neighbor, Doha Laura, returned for
Tonita and found her standing in the doorway, moaning and staring at her decapitated
mother, sister and children. . . .
This is only one tableau of many. Other scenes macabres have been created by
the armed forces in their 10-year exhibition of horror and death. People are not just
killed by death squads in El Salvador ~ they are decapitated and then their heads are
placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by
the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths.
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 7
Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut
from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they
are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones while parents are
forced to watch. . . . There is a purpose to all of this. One embraces a certain style
in order to achieve a certain effect. Stories of atrocities committed by Government
security troops spread by word of mouth. It is the attention to detail that captures
people's imagination and leaves them shaking. But these stories are not fairy tales.
The stories are punctuated with the hard evidence of corpses, mutilated flesh,
splattered brains and eyewitnesses. Sadomasochistic killing creates terror in El
Salvador. Terror creates passivity in the face of oppression. A passive population is
easy to control. Why the need to control the peasants? Somebody has to pick the
coffee and cotton and cut the sugar cane.
Craig W. Nelson and Kenneth I. Taylor, Witness to Genocide: The Present Situation of
Indians in Guatemala, London: Survival International, 1983 (collection of depositions
taken in Mexico of refugees from Guatemala). An excerpt (p. 19):
[A mother of two children, who fled her village as it was burned down with many
killed by the Guatemalan army, reports]: "In July, 1982, soldiers flew into the area by
helicopter. First they went to [the name is redacted to avoid possible retributions], a
nearby town, and killed five people, burned the town, and threw people, including
women and children, into the flames. . . . Children's throats were cut, and women
were hit with machetes. . . ."
[A man reports that he] watched as the soldiers killed fifteen people, including
women, with machetes. They set fire to the houses, and sometimes opened the
doors of huts and threw hand grenades inside. In all, fifty people in his village were
killed. Soldiers also killed forty-nine people in the nearby town of [name redacted],
which they burned as well. Two of those killed were his uncles. From a kilometer
away, he saw women from the village who were hung by their feet without clothes
and left.
Elizabeth Hanley, "Tales of Terror from El Salvador," In These Times, April 17, 1985, p.
16 (recounting stories of Salvadoran women in a refugee camp in Honduras). An
excerpt:
When the National Guard came to [the] village in U.S.-supplied helicopters, they
chopped all the children to bits and threw them to the village pigs. "The soldiers
laughed all the while," Luisa told me. "What were they trying to kill?" she asked, still
able to cry two years later. . . .
Like [her], all of the women still had tears to cry as they told stories of sons,
brothers and husbands gathered into a circle and set on fire after their legs had been
broken; or of trees heavy with women hanging from their wrists, all with breasts cut
off and facial skin peeled back, all slowly bleeding to death. A frenzy went with each
telling, as though women had yet to find a place inside themselves to contain it. Now,
to my right one of the women was rocking another. Everyone was trembling.
Representative Gerry Studds, Central America, 1981, Report to the Committee on
Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, 97th Congress, 1st Session,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1981 . An excerpt (pp. 26-29):
January 17-18, 1981 - Conversations with refugees from El Salvador (conducted
in areas along the Honduras-El Salvador border):
The conversations . . . were tape recorded and are summarized in detail below.
They describe what appears to be a systematic campaign conducted by the security
forces of El Salvador to deny any rural base for guerrilla operations in the north. By
terrorizing and depopulating villages in the region, they have sought to isolate the
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 8
guerrillas and create problems of logistics and food supply. This strategy was
recently summarized by one military commander, who told the Boston Globe: "The
subversives like to say that they are the fish and the people are the ocean. What we
have done in the north is to dry up the ocean so we can catch the fish easily." The
Salvadoran method of "drying up the ocean" involves, according to those who have
fled from its violence, a combination of murder, torture, rape, the burning of crops in
order to create starvation conditions, and a program of general terrorism and
harassment. . . .
The following is an outline of the statements made by refugees to the [delegation
led by Representative Barbara Mikulski], as summarized on the scene by the
translator accompanying the group:
Interview -- Woman No. 1: "This woman fled in November 1980, and while she
was then forced to flee, she was one of the last people from her village to flee. She
was 9 months pregnant. She had her little baby, which she is holding in her arms
right now, in the mountains on her way out to Honduras. The Army was setting up
guns, heavy cannon artillery on the hills around their village, bombing the villages and
forcing the people away. ... If people were caught in the village, they would kill them.
Women and children alike. She said that with pregnant women, they would cut open
the stomachs and take the babies out. She said she was very afraid because she
had seen the result of what a guard had done to a friend of hers. She had been
pregnant and they took the child out after they cut open her stomach. And where she
lived they did not leave one house standing. They burned all of them. . . ."
Interview -- Woman No. 2: Maria: "She say that she would like to tell us the
following: That many of her family were killed, so many were killed that she doesn't
even remember their names. . . . About 7 months ago they killed one of her family
and the child was an infant and is now in a hospital in a nearby town close to death.
The army threw the baby in the river when they found them, and they took them into
the woods and later they were found. She personally saw children around the age of
8 being raped, and then they would take their bayonets and make mincemeat of
them. With their guns they would shoot at their faces. . . ."
Question: "These were army troops or guards?"
Answer: "Troops. Army."
Question: "Did the left ever do these things?"
Answer: "No. No, they haven't done any of those kinds of things ... but the army
would cut people up and put soap and coffee in their stomachs as a mocking. They
would slit the stomach of a pregnant woman and take the child out, as if they were
taking eggs out of an iguana. That is what I saw. That is what I have to say. . . ."
Interview -- Man No. 2: "[United States helicopters] are up in the air and they
shoot at us. And we are completely defenseless. We have our ax and machetes to
clean the earth with and to cultivate the land, and that is all we have against the
helicopters."
Ms. Mikulski: "Has the left done anything against him?"
Answer: "No, they don't kill children. We don't complain about them at all. . . ."
Interview -- Woman No. 5: "[0]nce she saw [the army] kill six women. First they
killed two women and then they burned their bodies with firewood. She said, one
thing she saw was a dog carrying a new born infant in its mouth. The child was dead
because it had been taken from the mother's womb after the guard slit open her
stomach."
Ms. Mikulski: "How were the other two women killed?"
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 9
Answer: "First, they hung them and then they machinegunned them and then they
threw them down to the ground. When we arrived the dogs were eating them and
the birds were eating them. They didn't have any clothes on. They had decapitated
one of the women. They found the head somewhere else. Another woman's arm
was sliced off. We saw the killings from a hillside and then when we came back
down we saw what had happened. While we were with the bodies we heard another
series of gunshots and we fled again. . . . [I]t's the military that is doing this. Only the
military. The popular organization isn't doing any of this."
See also, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Bach and War in El Salvador," Spectator
(London), May 10, 1986, pp. 16-17 (quoting aSalvadoran death squad member: "We
learnt from you [i.e. Americans], we learnt from you the methods, like blowtorches in the
armpits, shots in the balls"); Allan Nairn, "Behind the Death Squads," Progressive, May
1984, pp. 1f (documenting U.S. training of, support for, and behind-the-scenes
involvement in Salvadoran Death Squad activities).
16. On freedom of the press in Sandinista Nicaragua, see for example, Thomas
Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas: the Undeclared War on Nicaragua,
Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987, pp. 6-10. An excerpt (pp. 7-10):
As is true in all states in time of war or threat of war, certain human rights were
gradually infringed upon in the name of national security [in Sandinista Nicaragua]. . .
. [0]n a half-dozen occasions, La Prensa was closed for two-day periods [in late
1981]. This action was taken under the terms of a press law decreed by the original
Junta (of which, ironically, La Prensa owner Violeta Chamorro had been part). . . .
However, even with these shutdowns, La Prensa continued to operate freely and in
bitter opposition to the government more than 95 percent of the time. . . .
In spring 1982 following contra attacks on important Nicaraguan infrastructure
and the disclosure in the U.S. media of President Reagan's earlier authorization of
funding for C.I.A.-sponsored paramilitary operations against its country, the
government declared a state of prewar emergency under which certain civil and
political rights were temporarily suspended. ... La Prensa, though now heavily
censored, continued to function until June 1986, when it was finally closed in the
wake of the House approval of the $100 million [for the contras]. (In El Salvador the
only real opposition papers had long since been driven completely out of business
through the murder or exile of their owners.)
John Spicer Nichols, "The Media," in Thomas Walker, ed., Nicaragua: The First Five
Years, New York: Praeger, 1985, pp. 183-199 (on the degree of censorship in Nicaragua
during the contra war, with comparisons to censorship in the U.S. during wartime). See
also chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 9. On civil liberties violations in times of war in the
United States, see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 4 to 7.
1 7. On the fate of El Salvador's independent press, see for example, Jorge Pinto
[editor of the former Salvadoran newspaper El Independiente, writing after he fled to
Mexico], "In Salvador, Nooseprint," Op-Ed, New York Times, May 6, 1 981 , p. A31 . An
excerpt:
In January 1980, El Independiente's offices were bombed. In April, an office boy
standing in the front entrance was killed in a machinegun attack. On June 27, armed
men arrived at the printing shop and gave the 40 workers there one minute to leave
before they placed dynamite under the press and destroyed it. Two days later, my
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 10
car was sprayed with machine-gun fire, pocking it with 37 bullet holes. Two other
such attacks were made on my life.
Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador, New York: Times
Books, 1 984. An excerpt (pp. 206, 21 2):
The country's small opposition newspapers, El Independiente and La Cronica, were
repeatedly bombed. La Cronica's editor in chief, Jaime Suarez, and a photojournalist,
Cesar Najarro, were seized mid-day while sitting in a downtown coffee shop. Their
bodies, hacked to pieces by machetes, were found a few days later. . . . Two weeks
after Reagan's triumph, troops stormed into the archdiocese's building, where they
ransacked the offices of the church newspaper, Orientacion, and destroyed the
facilities of the radio station, YSAX.
Aside from Pinto's Op-Ed, there was not one word in the New York Times's news
columns and not one editorial comment on the destruction of El Independiente. Before it
was finally destroyed, there had been four bombings of La Cronica in six months; the last
of these received forty words in a "News Brief" in the New York Times. See World News
Briefs, "Salvador Groups Attack Paper and U.S. Plant," New York Times, April 19, 1980,
p. 7. Chomsky comments {Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic
Societies, Boston: South End, 1 989, p. 42):
Contrasting sharply with the silence over the two Salvadoran newspapers is the case
of the opposition journal La Prensa in Nicaragua. Media critic Francisco Goldman
counted 263 references to its tribulations in the New York Times in four years [see
Francisco Goldman, "Sad Tales of La Libertad de Prensa," Harper's, August 1988, p.
56]. The distinguishing criterion is not obscure: the Salvadoran newspapers were
independent voices stilled by the murderous violence of U.S. clients; La Prensa is an
agency of the U.S. campaign to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, therefore a
"worthy victim," whose harassment calls forth anguish and outrage. . . . These
matters did not arise in the enthusiastic reporting of El Salvador's "free elections" in
1982 and 1984.
The situation was much the same in U.S. -client Guatemala. For example, on June
10, 1 988, fifteen heavily armed men broke into the offices of the newspaper La Epoca,
stole valuable equipment, and firebombed the offices, destroying them. They also
kidnapped the night watchman, releasing him later under threat of death if he were to
speak about the attack. Eyewitness testimony and other sources left little doubt that it
was an operation of the security forces. The editor, Byron Barrera Ortiz, held a press
conference on June 1 4th to announce that the journal would shut down "because there
are not conditions in the country to guarantee the exercise of free and independent
journalism." The destruction of La Epoca "signaled not only the end of an independent
media voice in Guatemala, but it served as a warning as well that future press
independence would not be tolerated by the government or security forces," as Americas
Watch put it. See "Guatemala: Independent press silenced by bombing," Central
America Report (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Inforpress Centroamericana), Vol. XV, No.
23, June 17, 1988, p. 182; "Guatemala: Low-intensity political violence," Central
America Report (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Inforpress Centroamericana), Vol. XV, No.
22, June 10, 1988, pp. 175-176.
These facts were not even reported contemporaneously in the New York Times or
Washington Post. One month later, the seventeenth paragraph of a story on Guatemala
by Stephen Kinzer mentioned the bombing of La Epoca, which "some diplomats
attributed to the security forces," and it was referred to again in August in the Times book
review in a report on a conference of Central American writers. See Stephen Kinzer,
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 1 1
"Top Guatemala Officers Solidly Behind President," New York Times, July 6, 1988, p.
A2; David Unger, "Central American Writers Meet Amid the Death Squads," New York
Times, August 7, 1 988, section 7, p. 25.
18. On the U.S. opposing the Central America peace process, see for example,
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New
York: Norton, 1993 (revised and expanded edition). See also, Noam Chomsky,
Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1 989,
ch. 4 and Appendix 4.5.
On the U.S. opposing the Middle East peace process, see chapter 4 of U.P. and its
footnotes 41 , 47, 48, 49 and 56; chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnotes 1 04 and 111; and the
text of chapter 8 of U.P.
19. For King Hassan as a "moderate," see for example, Eleanor Blau, "A King of
the Unexpected," New York Times, July 23, 1986, p. A6 (King Hassan "has been
described as charming and extremely self-confident ... he is usually regarded as pro-
Western, moderate and eager to preserve his throne against Islamic militants").
For useful lists of common media buzzwords and deceptive terminology, see Martin
A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News
Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990, pp. 10-13, 39-41 ("A Lexicon of Media Buzzwords");
Edward S. Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda,
Montreal: Black Rose, 1 992, pp. 1 1 3-1 87 ("A Doublespeak Dictionary for the 1 990s").
20. For Saudi Arabia as "moderate," see for example, Jonathan C. Randal, "Iran's
Rivalry With Saudis Seen as Factor in Book Row," Washington Post, February 21 , 1 989,
p. A1 7 ("Saudi Arabia and other moderate, pro-western regimes in the Arab world").
21 . On Iraq being described as "moving towards moderation," see for example,
Henry Kamm, "Iraq Is Improving Links to Both U.S. and Soviet," New York Times, March
29, 1 984, p. A1 2 ("a dramatic but little discussed Iraqi swing from Arab radicalism toward
moderation and a warming relationship with the United States"); E.A. Wayne, "Iraq
Returns to Mideast Political Lineup," Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 1989, p. 7
("Iraq's leadership remains 'tough-minded' says one official, but it is less ideological and
is aligning itself with moderates").
22. For the article on Indonesia, see John Murray Brown, "Bringing Irian Jaya into
20th century," Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 1987, p. 9 ("With the downfall in
1 965 of then President Sukarno, many in the West were keen to cultivate Jakarta's new
moderate leader, Suharto").
23. On U.S. support for the 1 965 coup in Indonesia, see footnote 1 8 of chapter 1 of
U.P.
For casualty estimates for the post-coup massacres in Indonesia, see for example,
Amnesty International, Indonesia: An Amnesty International Report, London: Amnesty
International Publications, 1977. An excerpt (pp. 12-13, 22, 41):
In the aftermath of the attempted coup [in 1965], the Army carried out a massive and
violent purge of people identified as or suspected of being members of the
Communist Party, or affiliated to left-wing organizations. ... In a Dutch television
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 12
interview in October 1976, the head of the Indonesian state security agency, Admiral
Sudomo, gave a definitive estimate: he said that more than half a million people were
killed following the attempted coup. There can be no doubt about the authority of that
estimate, except that the true figure is possibly much higher. . . . [Sudomo added]
that after the coup, 750,000 people were arrested. (Televisie Radio Omroep
Stichting, 9 October 1976). The official figures of 600,000 [given by Indonesian
Foreign Minister Adam Malik] or 750,000 arrested, do not include the number who
were killed.
Ernst Utrecht, "The Indonesian Army as an Instrument of Repression," Journal of
Contemporary Asia, Vol. 2, No. 1 , 1972, pp. 56 n.1 , 62 (relating "reliable" estimates of
500,000 killed after the 1 965 coup, and 700,000 killed by the Indonesian military by the
1970s).
On the U.S. government's view of the slaughter in Indonesia, see for example,
Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret
Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia, New York: New Press, 1995. An excerpt
(pp. 226, 229-230):
[T]he 1965-66 massacres constituted one of the bloodiest purges in modern
history: in the words of the C.I.A. study, "In terms of the numbers killed the anti-P.K.I.
[Indonesian Communist Party] massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst
mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930's, the
Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist blood bath of the
early 1950's. .. ."
The U.S. embassy's attitude [towards these killings] was clearly expressed
when, almost a month after the mass killings had begun, Francis Galbraith, the
deputy chief of mission (later to succeed Marshall Green as ambassador), reporting
to Washington on his conversation with a high-ranking Indonesian army officer, said
that he had "made clear" to him "that the embassy and the U.S.G[overnment] were
generally sympathetic with and admiring of what the army was doing." Careful study
of all declassified U.S. government documents that bear on the physical liquidation of
the P.K.I, disclose no instance of any American official objecting to or in any way
criticizing the 1 965-66 killings. . . . American input went beyond mere approbation
and encouragement. As Bunnell has established from U.S. government documents
and corroborative interviews with General Sukendro (in 1965 the ranking army
intelligence chief), the United States quickly fulfilled the army's request, relayed by
Sukendro on November 6, 1965, for weapons "to arm Moslem and nationalist youth in
Central Java for use against the P.K.I." in the context of overall army policy "to
eliminate the P.K.I."
For a rare investigative report on U.S. involvement in the Indonesia coup, see
Kathy Kadane, "Ex-agents say C.I.A. compiled death lists for Indonesians," San
Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1 990, p. A1 . An excerpt:
The U.S. government played a significant role in one of the worst massacres of
the century by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the
Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them, former U.S.
diplomats say. For the first time, U.S. officials acknowledge that in 1965 they
systematically compiled comprehensive lists of communist operatives, from top
echelons down to village cadres. As many as 5,000 names were furnished to the
Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had
been killed or captured, according to U.S. officials. . . .
Silent for a quarter century, former senior U.S. diplomats and C.I.A. officers
described in lengthy interviews how they aided Indonesian President Suharto, then
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 13
army leader, in his attack on the P.K.I. [Indonesian Communist Party]. "It really was
a big help to the army," said Robert J. Martens, a former member of the U.S.
Embassy's political section who is now a consultant to the State Department. "They
probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but
that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.
. . ." Approval for release of the names came from top U.S. Embassy officials,
including former Ambassador Marshall Green, deputy chief of mission Jack Lydman
and political section chief Edward Masters, the three acknowledged in interviews.
For a reply by Martens, see Robert Martens, "Indonesia's Fight Against Communism,
1965, " Letter, Washington Post, June 2, 1990, p. A18 ("If I said anything like [that], it
could only have been a wry remark"; although "[i]t is true I passed names of the P.K.I,
leaders and senior cadre system to the non-Communist forces," Suharto's men probably
could have obtained the information in any event).
See also, Kathy Kadane, "U.S. had role in '65 Indonesia massacre, ex-officials
say," Orange County Register (CA), May 20, 1 990, p. A8 (reporting that the U.S. also
provided "logistical support" including "state-of-the-art radio field equipment" on which
Indonesia's orders to attack villages and individuals were monitored).
On Suharto's genocidal occupation of East Timor with U.S. support, see the text of
chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 41 and 57.
24. For the articles describing the "welcome developments" in Indonesia, see
James Reston, "Washington: A Gleam of Light in Asia," New York Times, June 19,
1 966, p. E1 2; Robert P. Martin, "Indonesia: Hope . . . Where Once There Was None,"
U.S. News and World Report, June 6, 1 966, p. 70.
Similarly, in a cover story titled "INDONESIA: The Land the Communists Lost,"
Time magazine celebrated "The West's best news for years in Asia" under the heading
"Vengeance with a Smile," devoting 5 pages of text and 6 more of pictures to the "boiling
bloodbath that almost unnoticed took 400,000 lives." Time happily announced that the
new army is "scrupulously constitutional" and "based on law not on mere power," in the
words of its "quietly determined" leader Suharto, with his "almost innocent face."
Interestingly, details of the slaughter are not even minimized, as Time notes that:
During the eight months the terror lasted, to be a known Communist was usually to
become a dead Communist. . . . Many were decapitated, their heads impaled on
poles outside their front doors for widows and children to see. So many bodies were
thrown into the Brantas River that Kediri townsfolk are still afraid to eat fish - and
communities downstream had to take emergency measures to prevent an outbreak
of the plague.
Still, Time assures us, "there was little remorse anywhere," using as an illustration an
Imam (Islamic leader) from a village whose population was cut in half, who states: "The
Communists deserved the people's wrath." Families of victims were not consulted. See
"Vengeance with a Smile," Time, July 1 5, 1 966, p. 22.
See also, C.L. Sulzberger, "Foreign Affairs: As the Shadow Lengthens," New York
Times, December 3, 1965, p. 38 ("From an American viewpoint, this represents a
positive achievement"); "The extended family; Two fathers: Sukarno and Suharto,"
Economist (London), August 15, 1987, p. 3. An excerpt:
The president of Indonesia today is a Javanese general called Suharto. . . . [H]e will
remain so ~ health permitting ~ until at least the early 1990s, since there is no other
candidate for next year's presidential election. It is easy, therefore, for western
liberals to assume he is a dictator in the manner of South America's generals. The
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 14
assumption is logical, but it does scant justice to General Suharto. ... His
Indonesian critics concede he is at heart benign.
25. For the Times editorial, see Editorial, "Aid for Indonesia," New York Times,
August 25, 1966, p. 36. An excerpt:
[T]he staggering mass slaughter of Communists and pro-Communists -- which
took the lives of an estimated 150,000 to 400,000 -- has left a legacy of subsurface
tension that may not be eased for generations. . . .
Washington wisely has not intruded into the Indonesia turmoil. To embrace the
country's new rulers publicly could well hurt them. They themselves want to retain a
neutralist posture. There is an urgent need for a large international loan -- perhaps as
much as a half-billion dollars. . . . [I]t is vital that the United States play a positive role
in building an international aid consortium.
See also, Editorial, "Indonesia's New Phase," New York Times, December 22, 1965, p.
30. An excerpt:
Washington, which has wisely stayed in the background during the recent upheavals
[in Indonesia], would do well to encourage the International Monetary Fund, the new
Asian Development Bank and, perhaps, an international consortium to take the lead.
Editorial, "The Indonesian Irony," New York Times, February 17, 1966, p. 32; Editorial,
"Return to the Fold," New York Times, September 29, 1 966, p. 46.
26. On middle class pessimism about future standards of living, see chapter 9 of
U.P. and its footnotes 1 0, 42 and 44; and chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 1 01 .
27. There is further discussion of contemporary poverty in the U.S. in chapter 1 of
U.P.
28. On the rate of return to Europe of immigrants to the U.S., see for example,
Richard B. DuBoff, Accumulation and Power: An Economic History of the United States,
Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1989. An excerpt (p. 179):
Between 1870 and 1900, it appears that more than one-fourth of all immigrants
eventually returned home. The proportion rose to nearly 40 percent in the 1 890s and
remained at that level until the legislative restrictions of 1921-24. From 1900 to 1980,
the 30 million legal immigrants admitted to the United States must be balanced
against 10 million emigrants who left to settle elsewhere.
29. On violent crime being disproportionately poor people preying on one another,
see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 46.
30. Although claims about intentional introduction of drugs into the inner cities
have been widely ridiculed, they become less ludicrous -- though they remain
unsubstantiated -- when one considers (1 ) the extensive history of U.S. government
involvement in the international drug trade, and (2) the U.S. government's vast covert
operations against domestic dissidence, such as COINTELPRO, which had as an
explicit goal the disruption of black community organizing. On the first of these points,
see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 79. On the second, see chapter 4 of U.P. and its
footnote 33.
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 15
31 . On the criminal prosecution rates of the poor and minorities, see chapter 1 of
U.P. and especially its footnotes 38 and 46; also its footnotes 31 to 37, and 48.
32. On the health impact of tobacco and marijuana, see for example, Ethan A.
Nadelmann, "Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequences, and
Alternatives," Science, September 1 , 1 989, pp. 939-947 at p. 943 (reporting that there
have been no deaths attributable to marijuana among 60 million users, while all illegal
drugs combined resulted in 3562 reported deaths in 1985; in contrast, deaths attributable
to tobacco are estimated at over 300,000 a year, while alcohol use adds an additional
50,000 to 200,000 annual deaths and alcohol abuse is a factor in some 40 percent of
roughly 46,000 annual traffic fatalities); Philip J. Hilts, "Wide Peril Is Seen In Passive
Smoking," New York Times, May 10, 1990, p. A25 (the Environmental Protection
Agency has tentatively concluded that second-hand smoking causes "3,000 or more
lung-cancer deaths annually and a substantial number of respiratory illnesses and
deaths among the children of smokers"); Catherine Foster, "Alcohol Abuse: Sleeper in
Drug War," Christian Science Monitor, September 18, 1989, p. 8 (the National Council
on Alcoholism reports that there are 2 million drug addicts but 1 0.5 million alcoholics,
and alcohol "is the leading cause of death among 1 5- to 24-year-olds"). See also
chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnotes 36 and 55.
33. For the cross-cultural study of "religious fanaticism," see Walter Dean
Burnham, "Social Stress and Political Response: Religion and the 1980 Election,"
Appendix A to Burnham's "The 1 980 Earthquake: Realignment, Reaction, or What?," in
Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, eds., The Hidden Election: Politics and Economics
in the 1980 Presidential Campaign, New York: Pantheon, 1 981 , pp. 1 32-1 40, especially
p. 135.
34. For polls on Americans' religious beliefs, see for example, George Gallup, Jr.
and Jim Castelli, The People's Religion: American Faith in the 90's, New York:
Macmillan, 1989, pp. 46-48, 4, 14. This study gives the United States a rating of 67 on
its "Religion Index," based on various indicators -- whereas West Germany, Norway, the
Netherlands, Great Britain, and France all had scores in the thirties, and Denmark
brought up the rear with a 21 . It also finds that:
o Nine Americans in ten say they have never doubted the existence of God.
o Eight Americans in ten say they believe they will be called before God on Judgment
Day to answer for their sins.
o Eight Americans in ten believe God still works miracles.
o Seven Americans in ten believe in life after death.
Richard Severo, "Poll Finds Americans Split on Creation Idea," New York Times,
August 29, 1 982, section 1 , p. 22 (reporting a Gallup poll which found that 44 percent of
Americans believe "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within
the last 1 0,000 years," 38 percent accept divine guidance of evolution, and a mere 9
percent accept Darwinian evolution ~ a number not much above statistical error).
35. Walter Mondale actually was the son of a Methodist minister. See "Text of the
First Reagan-Mondale Debate," Washington Post, October 8, 1984, p. A23. Asked
whether he was a Born-Again Christian, Mondale explained:
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 16
I am a son of a Methodist minister. My wife is the daughter of a Presbyterian
minister. And I don't know if I've been born again, but I know that I was born into a
Christian family. And I believe I have sung at more weddings and funerals than
anybody to ever seek the presidency. Whether that helps or not, I don't know. I
have a deep religious faith; our family does. It is fundamental. It's probably the
reason I'm in politics. I think our faith tells us, instructs us about the moral life that we
should lead. And I think we are all together on that.
The passage followed a question to Reagan asking why he did not regularly attend
religious services given his professed strong religious beliefs.
On the three candidates in the 1 980 election saying that they were "Born Again,"
see for example, George Gallup, Jr. and Jim Castelli, The People's Religion: American
Faith in the 90's, New York: Macmillan, 1 989, p. 1 9.
36. On Bush's version of the Oath of Office, see for example, Ann Devroy, "A
Matter-of-Fact Bush Takes His New Place in Nation's History," Washington Post,
January 21 , 1 989, p. A7. For the Constitution's specification of the text of the Oath of
Office, see U.S. CONST., art. II, §1 , cl. 8.
37. On the Nazis in the 1 988 Bush campaign, see for example, Russell C. Bellant,
"Will Bush Purge Nazi Collaborators in the G.O.P.?," Op-Ed, New York Times,
November 19, 1988, section 1 , p. 27 (reporting that seven of the neo-Nazis and anti-
Semites were discharged from the Bush campaign after the revelations, but four of them
retained leadership positions in the Heritage Groups Council, the "Ethnic Outreach" arm
of the Republican National Committee); John B. Judis, "Bush's teflon on anti-Semitic
links," In These Times, September 28-October4, 1988, pp. 6-7 (reviewing the "curiously
blase" reactions of the leading Jewish organizations "about both the revelations and
Bush's response to them"); David Corn, "G.O.P. Anti-Semites," Nation, October 24,
1988, p. 369; Charles R. Allen, "The Real Nazis Behind Every Bush," Village Voice,
November 1 , 1988, p. 24; Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, "The G.O.P.-Nazi
Connection," Extra!, September/October 1988, p. 5 (on the media's minimization of the
episode).
See also, Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to
Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990. An excerpt (p. 161):
An exception [to the media's downplaying of the story] was the Philadelphia Inquirer,
which featured a series of investigative pieces documenting the Nazi link. A front-
page lead story detailed the sordid past of men like Florian Galdau, the national
chairman of Romanians for Bush, who defended convicted war criminal Valerian
Trifa; Radi Slavoff, co-chairman of Bulgarians for Bush, who arranged a 1983 event
in Washington that honored Austin App, author of several texts denying the existence
of the Nazi Holocaust; Phillip Guarino, chairman of the Italian-American National
Republican Federation, who belonged to a neofascist masonic lodge implicated in
terrorist attacks in Italy and Latin America; and Bohdan Fedorak, vice chairman of
Ukrainians for Bush, who was also a leader of a Nazi collaborationist organization
involved in anti-Polish and anti-Jewish wartime pogroms.
38. For the New Republic's editorial, see Editorial, "Anti-Semitism, Left and Right,"
New Republic, October 3, 1 988, p. 9. An excerpt:
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 17
[There is a] comfortable haven for Jew-hatred on the left, including the left wing of
the Democratic Party, [parts of the Jesse Jackson campaign, and] the ranks of
increasingly well-organized Arab activists. . . .
Salient anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism with a program. One tenet of that program
is the delegitimization of the Jewish national movement ~ about the only national
movement these people don't seem to thrill to. Another tenet ~ sometimes disguised,
sometimes not - is that a just society would not have individuals from any group
underrepresented or overrepresented in its positions of prestige and influence. This
attack on talent was the central doctrine of the politics of resentment for which
civilization (and the Jews) have already paid dearly. It's strange how some
Democrats so alert to rather antique and anemic forms of anti-Semitism among the
Republicans, haven't noticed far more virulent forms in their own contemporary
habitat.
For the book by Anti-Defamation League's former National Director, see Nathan
Perlmutter and Ruth Ann Perlmutter, The Real Anti-Semitism In America, New York:
Arbor House, 1 982. For discussion of the Perlmutters' thesis, see Noam Chomsky,
Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, Boston: South End,
1983 (updated edition 1999), pp. 14-16.
39. On the letters opposing the Brookline Holocaust project, see Barbara Vobejda,
"Education Grant Process Assailed; Holocaust Program Bypassed After Criticism by
Schlafly," Washington Post, October 20, 1 988, p. A21 . An excerpt:
Schlafly charged "Facing History and Ourselves" [the program] with "psychological
manipulation, induced behavioral change and privacy-invading treatment" and urged
the department to reject its proposals. . . . Concluding her remarks [one of the
Education Department's reviewers] wrote: "The program gives no evidence of
balance or objectivity. The Nazi point of view, however unpopular, is still a point of
view and is not presented, nor is that of the Ku Klux Klan."
Ed Vulliamy, "Holocaust Project Funds: 'Eliminated' by Ideology?," Washington Post,
October 4, 1 988, p. A1 7 (the program also was described as "offensive to
fundamentalists," "leftist," "anti-war," and "anti-hunting"); Muriel Cohen, "Holocaust
Study Program Gets Lesson in Rejection," Boston Globe, November 14, 1988, p. 21 ;
David Corn and Jefferson Morley, "Beltway Bandits; Against Remembrance," Nation,
November 7, 1988, p. 448.
In September 1989, the Education Department reversed course and approved a
grant for the program. See Bill McAllister, "Education Dept. Clears Holocaust Study
Grant," Washington Post, September 27, 1 989, p. A1 5.
40. For books discussing Reagan's confusions while President, see for example,
David A. Stockman [Reagan's Director of the Office of Management and Budget], The
Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed, New York: Harper and Row,
1 986. A few of the many examples (pp. 356-358, 366, 375):
[Reagan] had managed to convince himself that [the three-year $1 00 billion tax
increase] wasn't really a tax increase at all. "This bill only collects taxes we are
owed already," he told the group of dubious House Republicans in the Cabinet Room.
"It won't raise taxes on the legitimate taxpayer at all." That was true only if you
considered people who bought cigarettes and owned a telephone "illegitimate"
taxpayers; they and millions of others were the ones who would now be paying more
taxes. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 18
By the end of 1982, the fiscal situation was an utter, mind-numbing catastrophe.
To convince the President [the economy] really was as bad as I was saying, I
invented a multiple-choice budget quiz. The regular budget briefings weren't doing
the job. I thought this might be the way. . . . The President enjoyed the quiz
immensely. He sat there day after day with his pencil. . . . When we told him what
his grade was early the next week, he was not so pleased. He had flunked the
exam. . . .
When the discussion turned to taxes, [Reagan's] fist came down squarely on the
table. "I don't want to hear any more talk about taxes," he insisted. "The problem is
deficit spending? It is difficult politely to correct the President of the United States
when he has blatantly contradicted himself. . . .
[A colleague told Stockman:] "Don't get offended now," he began, "but you might
as well know it. When you sit there going over the deficit projections, the man's eyes
glaze over. He tunes out completely. . . ."
I couldn't believe I was hearing this. How was an unneeded inflation allowance
supposed to stop Soviet tanks? But the President did not grasp the difference
between constant dollars and current (inflated) dollars. . . .
What do you do when your President ignores all the palpable, relevant facts and
wanders in circles. I could not bear to watch this good and decent man go on in this
embarrassing way. I buried my head in my plate.
See also, Mark Green and Gail MacColl, There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan's Reign
of Error, New York: Pantheon, 1983; Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and
the Reagan Presidency, New York: Schocken, 1 988, especially ch. 7 -- titled '"An
Amiable Dunce'" -- pp. 1 32-1 51 (presenting an incontrovertible case for the chapter's
title, and noting such memorable but underreported moments as Reagan falling asleep
during a one-on-one audience with the Pope, dozing off in the middle of speeches by the
French and Italian Presidents, his beliefs that the Russian language has no word for
"freedom," that trees cause eighty percent of air pollution, that the problem of segregated
schools has been solved, his optimistic attitude towards limited nuclear war, and his
tortured rewritings of history and only "passing acquaintance" with important policies of
his administration); Mark Hertsgaard, "How Reagan Seduced Us: Inside the President's
Propaganda Factory," Village Voice, September 18, 1984, pp. 1 f at p. 14 (reporting how
figures in the press considered Reagan's "abysmal ignorance" so common as to be
unnewsworthy. As A.B.C. news reporter Sam Donaldson put it: "At first I thought it was
important when Reagan would fudge up figures on the Health and Human Services
budget to make it look like he wasn't cutting, but now I don't have time to put it in. I've
told my audience before that he doesn't know facts so often, is it news that today he
doesn't know facts again? If he got through a press conference flawlessly, I would
certainly say so that night. That, to me, would be news. Now, that lets him off the hook, I
agree").
41 . On the role of the British monarchy in de-politicizing the country, see for
example, Tom Nairn, The Enchanted Glass: Britain and its Monarchy, London: Radius,
1988.
42. Chomsky notes that, among other grounds for Nuremberg punishment -- based
upon either direct or indirect involvement in atrocities and war crimes -- are Truman's
counter-insurgency campaign in Greece; Eisenhower's role in the Guatemala coup;
Kennedy's invasions of Cuba and Vietnam; Johnson's invasion of the Dominican
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 19
Republic; Nixon's invasion of Cambodia; Ford's support for the invasion of East Timor;
Carter's support for the genocide in East Timor and his administration's activities in
Nicaragua (where, for example, it helped to spirit Somoza's National Guard out of the
country in planes with Red Cross markings, a war crime, in order to establish them
elsewhere); Reagan's activities in Central America and his administration's support for
Israel's invasion of Lebanon; Bush's invasion of Panama and activities in Nicaragua;
and Clinton's missile strikes against Iraq, the Sudan, and Afghanistan.
On the rhetoric of the Nuremberg prosecutors, see for example, Richard A. Falk,
"The Circle of Responsibility," Nation, January 26, 1970, p. 77 (quoting U.S. Supreme
Court Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert H. Jackson's statement of the basic
principle: "If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether
the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to
lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have
invoked against us").
43. For Taylor's account of the standards at Nuremberg, see Telford Taylor,
Nuremberg and Vietnam: an American Tragedy, Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970, pp. 37-38;
Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir, New York:
Knopf, 1992, pp. 398f.
44. On the Tokyo trials, see for example, Richard M. Minnear, Victor's Justice: the
Tokyo War Crimes Trial, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, pp. 6, 67f ("Some
5,700 Japanese were tried on conventional war crimes charges, and 920 of these men
were executed"; "None of the defendants at Tokyo was accused of having personally
committed an atrocity," but only of having conspired to authorize such crimes or having
failed to stop them, and no evidence was submitted that the charged crimes were actual
government policy); A. Frank Reel, The Case of General Yamashita, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1 949, at p. 1 74 (book-length narrative of the Yamashita trial, written by
a member of Yamashita's American defense team, noting: "There was no finding of any
order, any knowledge, any condonation on General Yamashita's part. Crimes had been
committed by his troops, and he had 'failed' to provide effective control. That was all. He
was to hang").
45. Further important changes in the international economy in the 1 990s are
discussed in chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 58 to 64.
46. Two principal threats to human existence are: (1 ) depletion of the atmospheric
concentration of ozone (a form of oxygen whose presence in the atmosphere prevents
most ultraviolet and other dangerous radiation from penetrating to the earth's surface,
where it harms life) by pollutants; and (2) global warming through the greenhouse effect,
wherein gases released in combustion (and water vapor caused by rising temperatures)
trap more solar radiation from reflecting off the earth back into space, and thereby
increase the temperature of the earth ~ which could in turn melt polar ice sheets, raise
the sea level, lead to flooding, drier soils, massive climate changes, and the extinction of
species.
On the general state of these crises, see among many other sources, Ross
Gelbspan, The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle over Earth's Threatened Climate,
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1 997, especially pp. 34-59 (with a 40-page Appendix
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 20
titled "A Scientific Critique of the Greenhouse Skeptics," including point-by-point
refutation of the claims and work of the most visible and prominent of the skeptics by
several leading climate scientists). An excerpt (pp. 1-2, 5, 9, 17, 22):
In January 1995 a vast section of ice the size of Rhode Island broke off the
Larsen ice shelf in Antarctica. Although it received scant coverage in the press, it
was one of the most spectacular and nightmarish manifestations yet of the ominous
changes occurring on the planet. As early as the 1970s, scientists predicted that the
melting of Antarctica's ice shelf would signal the accelerating heating of the planet as
human activity pushed the temperature of the earth upward. They were not wrong.
Two months later, a three-hundred-foot-deep ice shelf farther north collapsed, leaving
only a plume of fragments in the Weddell Sea as evidence of its twenty-thousand-
year existence. . . . Measurements in the Antarctic peninsula show that its average
temperature has risen by nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the last twenty years. . . .
The reason most Americans don't know what is happening to the climate is that
the oil and coal industries have spent millions of dollars to persuade them that global
warming isn't happening. . . . The deep-pocketed industry lobby has promoted their
opinions through every channel of communication it can reach. It has demanded
access to the press for these scientists' views, as a right of journalistic fairness.
Unfortunately, most editors are too uninformed about climate science to resist. They
would not accord to tobacco company scientists who dismiss the dangers of
smoking the same weight that they accord to world-class lung specialists. But in the
area of climate research, virtually no news story appears that does not feature
prominently one of these few industry-sponsored scientific "greenhouse skeptics. . .
." "There is no debate among any statured scientists of what is happening," says
[Chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Environment of the International
Committee of Scientific Unions James] McCarthy. By "statured" scientists he means
those who are currently engaged in relevant research and whose work has been
published in the refereed scientific journals. "The only debate is the rate at which it's
happening."
Richard A. Kerr, "New greenhouse report puts down dissenters," Science, August 3,
1990, p. 481. An excerpt:
"THE GLOBAL WARMING PANIC: A Classic Case of Overreaction," screams
the cover of Forbes. "U.S. Data Fail to Show Warming Trend," announces the New
York Times. A greenhouse skeptic and a greenhouse advocate go head to head on
"This Week with David Brinkley" in what looks like an even match. . . . [Rjecent
media coverage has given the impression that scientists can't agree among
themselves whether the buildup of greenhouse gases is going to scorch the globe or
merely leave it imperceptibly warmed. But a soon-to-be-published report [produced
by a working group of the International Panel on Climate Change], the most broadly
based assessment of the greenhouse threat conducted to date, presents a very
different impression: There's virtual unanimity, it says, among greenhouse experts
that a warming is on the way and that the consequences will be serious. . . .
"I was amazed how simple it was to come to agreement," says climatologist
Christopher Folland of the U.K. Meteorological Office in Bracknell, who is a lead
author of the report's section on observed climate change. "In America, a few
extreme viewpoints have taken center stage. There are none like that elsewhere."
Not a single panel member or reviewer agreed with [M.l.T.'s Richard] Lindzen that
there is no sign of global warming in the climate records, says Folland. "That's about
200 people," he notes.
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 21
For a useful study of the massive corporate propaganda campaign to distort the
facts -- and block actions to address -- this crisis, see Sharon Beder, Global Spin: The
Corporate Assault On Environmentalism, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green,
1998, especially ch. 6.
On some of the thwarted international attempts to address the issue, see for
example, Rose Gutfeld, "Earth Summitry: How Bush Achieved Global Warming Pact
With Modest Goals," Wall Street Journal, May 27, 1 992, p. A1 . An excerpt:
Until two weeks ago, it looked as if next week's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
would become a widely publicized global morality play, with President Bush cast as
the villain. He was the only major world leader unwilling to sign an agreement with
firm limits on the "greenhouse" gases feared to cause global warming. Mr. Bush, who
as a candidate in 1988 had promised to be the "environmental president," was in
danger of being tagged in Rio as No. 1 Enemy of the Earth. But in an extraordinary
coup . . . Bush administration negotiators persuaded the representatives of 142 other
nations to reverse course. They all agreed to sign a vaguely worded pact that sets
no binding timetables for reducing emissions, makes no commitments to achieving
specific levels of emissions -- indeed, makes no commitments to do anything at all.
How did the White House manage to set the global-warming agenda for the
coming conference on its own terms? The key, according to people familiar with the
talks, was a clever bargaining ploy devised by an influential but little-known State
Department official. The heart of his strategy: to use the threat that Mr. Bush would
boycott the summit to wangle an agreement that wouldn't lock the U.S. into costly
requirements that could threaten economic growth. ... If the leader of the world's
only remaining superpower didn't show, they figured, the conference would be judged
a failure.
Farhan Haq, "Failure Of Rio Follow-Up Meeting A Wake-Up Call," Inter Press Service,
June 27, 1 997 (available on Nexis database). An excerpt:
By all admissions, the special session of the United Nations General Assembly this
week to follow up on the 1992 Rio Earth Summit ended as a remarkable failure. . . .
[T]he countries of both the North and the South honestly faced up to the lack of real
action they had made on environmental promises made in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. . . .
European leaders especially were frustrated that the two main achievements they
sought at the conference ... ran aground. U.S. President Bill Clinton refused to bind
Washington to the 15-percent target [for reducing carbon emissions] despite massive
pressure this week to sign on to the European Union (E.U.) plan.
For one example of minimization of the issue in the U.S. press, see William K.
Stevens, "Cushioning the Shock of Global Warming," New York Times, November 30,
1997, section 4, p. 3. An excerpt:
There will surely be winners as well as losers [from global warming]: while
Canadian and Russian farmers might reap more wheat, African farmers might reap
drought-induced disaster. While summer heat in the southern United States might be
more intense, northern winters might be milder. The economies of entire regions ~
tourist-dependent New England, for instance ~ might be transformed with uncertain
results. ... But humans are a resilient species. They have always had to contend
with climatic change and have often been profoundly affected by it. Conventional
wisdom now holds that Homo sapiens owes its very existence to a climatic
adaptation. . . .
In North America, global warming would probably bring some benefits. . . . Milder
northern winters could cut the costs of heating and snow removal. But for every
benign impact, according to the intergovernmental panel, there would be at least one
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 22
negative counterpart. How will the New England tourist industry adjust, for instance,
if brilliant fall foliage is replaced by duller oaks and hickories. . . . How disruptive and
expensive would it be to progressively abandon beachfront developments as seas
rise . . .? Fifty or 100 years from now, if scientists' predictions about climate change
turn out to be right, it may be that people will take the new climatic order in stride.
See also chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 86 and 1 03.
47. For a statement of the geopolitical tradition, see for example, George F.
Kennan, American Diplomacy 1900-1950, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951
(expanded edition 1984), p. 5. See also, Melvyn P. Leffler, "The American Conception
of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1 945-48," American Historical
Review, April 1 984, pp. 346-400.
48. For comparisons of social welfare in the U.S. and other countries, see for
example, Richard B. DuBoff, Accumulation and Power: An Economic History of the
United States, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1989. An excerpt (pp. 183-184):
A study of the U.S., Japanese, West German, and Swedish economies for 1960
to 1985 employs 17 indicators of quality of life and economic performance to assess
how well each country provides its people with "adequate income, good health, a
secure livelihood, leisure time, adequate shelter, a long life, and freedom from harm."
On the basis of the indicators, the U.S. performance was the worst, while Sweden's
was the best.
A more concrete view of the American social welfare function comes from
comparing "number one" per capita incomes with specific facts of everyday life:
among advanced industrial nations, the United States is "number one," or close to it,
in the following categories. . . .
- Combined worst ranking for life expectancy and infant mortality. . . .
- Highest incidence of poverty in the industrial world, with exceptionally high infant
and preschool child poverty. . . .
- Lowest level of job security for workers, with greatest chance of being
dismissed without notice or reason. . . .
- Greatest chance for a worker to become unemployed without adequate
unemployment and medical insurance. . . .
- Less leisure time for workers. . . .
- Lowest combined level of working-class mobilization, percent of the labor force
unionized, and percentage of the electorate voting in national elections. . . .
- Lowest ratio of female to male earnings. . . .
- Among worst rankings of all advanced industrial nations for levels of pollutant
emissions into the air.
Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and John Schmitt, The State of Working America,
1998-1999, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, especially ch. 8 (detailed comparison
of the economic performance of 20 rich industrialized countries, reaching similar
conclusions about the U.S. economy in the late 1990s); Colin McCord and Harold P.
Freeman, "Excess Mortality in Harlem," New England Journal of Medicine, January 18,
1 990, pp. 1 73-1 77 ("Survival analysis showed that black men in Harlem were less likely
to reach the age of 65 than men in Bangladesh"). See also chapter 1 of U.P. and its
footnotes 4, 5, 8, 1 1 , 1 2, 1 4, 27 and 28.
On Cuba's health and development standards, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its
footnote 31.
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 23
49. On the attempt to maintain "veto power" over Japan's energy resources, see for
example, Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Vol. II ("The Roaring of the
Cataract, 1947-1950"), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. While Kennan
advocated rebuilding Japan's economy, he noted (pp. 56-57):
"On the other hand, it seems to me absolutely inevitable that we must keep
completely the maritime and air controls as a means ... of keeping control of the
situation with respect to [the] Japanese in all eventualities. ... [It is] all the more
imperative that we retain the ability to control their situation by controlling the
overseas sources of supply and the naval power and air power without which it
cannot become again aggressive." As if the listener might mistake his intent, he went
on. "If we really in the Western world could work out controls, I suppose, adept
enough and foolproof enough and cleverly enough exercised really to have power
over what Japan imports in the way of oil and such other things as she has got to get
from overseas, we would have veto power on what she does need in the military and
industrial field."
Yoshi Tsurumi, "Japan," Daedalus (The Gulf Crisis: In Perspective), Vol. 104, No. 4, Fall
1 975, pp. 1 1 3-1 27. An excerpt (pp. 114-115):
During the immediate post-war years, occupied Japan was not permitted to
reconstruct the oil-refining facilities that had been destroyed by Allied bombings, a
policy widely attributed in the oil industry of Japan to the fact that the oil bureau of
General MacArthur's headquarters was heavily staffed with American personnel on
temporary leave from Jersey Standard and Mobil. . . . [When in] July, 1949, General
Headquarters permitted the Japanese government to begin the reconstruction of oil
refining facilities . . . Exxon (Esso's parent company), Mobil, Shell and Getty
positioned themselves as de facto integrated oil firms in Japan, whose refining and
marketing interests were tied to their crude-oil interests held outside Japan. Under
the Allied occupation, the Japanese government was powerless to block such
business links.
50. On the impact of combustion on the environment, see footnote 46 of this
chapter.
51 . On industries lobbying for regulation, see for example, Thomas Ferguson,
Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-
Driven Political Systems, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, especially chs. 1
to 4 (describing in detail how important sectors of the business community long have
advocated government regulation); Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The
Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics, New York: Hill and Wang,
1986, ch. 2 (outlining the role of powerful U.S. business coalitions in supporting
government regulations and programs since the New Deal); Elizabeth Fones-Wolf,
Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. An excerpt (pp. 23-24):
[T]he more sophisticated conservatives or moderates who joined together during
the thirties in organizations like the Business Advisory Council and in the forties, the
Committee for Economic Development [C.E.D.,] . . . looked to central economic
planning ... to ensure prosperity. . . . The C.E.D. asserted that America could no
longer afford wild economic fluctuations. Instead of "ignorant opposition to change,"
the business community should help define a new role for the state to promote
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 24
economic growth and stability. In 1946 [Paul G. Hoffman of Studebaker Automobile
Company] challenged corporate leaders to "look one important fact squarely in the
face -- that the Federal Government has a vital role to play in our capitalistic system."
[National Association of Manufacturers] conservatives "who claimed that all that is
necessary is to 'unshackle free enterprise' are guilty of an irresponsible sentiment. . .
Moderates tended to take an accomodationistic attitude toward organized labor.
Rather than fearing unions, some welcomed them with open arms. . . . Through
these means and without giving up real power, these executives hoped to gain
organized labor's cooperation in increasing productivity and industrial stability. To
these employers the [National Labor Relations Board] was not an enemy but an ally
in the development of responsible unionism.
Edward S. Herman, Corporate Control, Corporate Power, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1 981 , pp. 1 73-1 74; Kim McQuaid, Uneasy Partners: Big Business in
American Politics, 1945-1990, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994
(discussing the general phenomenon). See also chapter 9 of U.P. and its footnote 18;
and chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 94.
For the ultimate example of the conflict between unbridled competition for profits
and self-preservation -- the destruction of the natural environment ~ see footnote 46 of
this chapter; and the text of chapter 1 of U.P.
52. For declassified U.S. government documents explaining the role of Third World
countries, see for example, N.S.C. [National Security Council Memorandum] 144/1 ,
"United States Objectives and Courses of Action With Respect to Latin America," March
18, 1953, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Vol. IV ("The American
Republics"), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983. The Memorandum
begins (pp. 6-7, 9):
There is a trend in Latin America toward nationalistic regimes maintained in large part
by appeals to the masses of the population. Concurrently, there is an increasing
popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the
masses, with the result that most Latin American governments are under intense
domestic political pressures to increase production and to diversify their economies.
Aiming to avoid this "drift in the area toward radical and nationalistic regimes" -- which is
"facilitated by historic anti-U.S. prejudices and exploited by Communists" -- the
Memorandum then lists the objectives and proposed courses of action for the United
States, which include "Adequate production in Latin America of, and access by the
United States to, raw materials essential to U.S. security"; "The ultimate standardization
of Latin American military organization, training, doctrine and equipment along U.S.
lines"; and "convincing them that their own self-interest requires an orientation of Latin
American policies to our objectives."
A later N.S.C. document, N.S.C. 5432/1 of 1954, repeats much of the same
language, adding that the U.S. should "encourage them by economic assistance and
other means to base their economies on a system of private enterprise and, as essential
thereto, to create a political and economic climate conducive to private investment, of
both domestic and foreign capital, including . . . opportunity to earn and in the case of
foreign capital to repatriate a reasonable return . . . [and] respect for contract and property
rights, including assurance of prompt, adequate, and effective compensation in the event
of expropriation." The Memorandum adds that the U.S. should "consider
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 25
sympathetically" independent Latin American economic initiatives, but only "with the
understanding that any such proposal would not involve discrimination against U.S.
trade." In addition, the document calls for the U.S. to "encourage through consultation,
prudent exchange of information, and other available means, individual and collective
action against Communist or other anti-U.S. subversion or intervention in any American
state" (emphasis added). Such actions should involve "A greater utilization of the
Organization of American States as a means of achieving our objectives, which will
avoid the appearance of unilateral action and identify our interests with those of the other
American states." See N.S.C. 5432/1 , "United States Objectives and Courses of Action
With Respect To Latin America," September 3, 1 954, Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1952-1954, Vol. IV ("The American Republics"), Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1983, pp. 81-86.
For another memorandum stating the same reasoning, see N.S.C. 5613/1 ,
"Statement Of Policy On U.S. Policy Toward Latin America," September 25, 1956,
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955-1957, Vol. VI ("American Republics;
Multilateral; Mexico; Caribbean"), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987,
pp. 119-127.
A major State Department study on the international order in the wake of World War
II explains that the "exploitation of the colonial and dependent areas of the African
Continent" should be undertaken to aid in the reconstruction of Western Europe, adding
that "the idea . . . has much to recommend it" and noting that the opportunity to exploit
Africa will provide a psychological lift for the European powers, affording them "that
tangible objective for which everyone has been rather unsuccessfully groping." In the
same report, the head of the State Department Planning Staff articulates the general
problem (pp. 524-525):
[W]e have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This
disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this
situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the
coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain
this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so,
we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention
will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We
need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-
benefaction. . . .
We should cease to talk about vague and - for the Far East - unreal objectives
such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The
day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The
less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
See P.P.S. [Policy Planning Staff] 23, "Review of Current Trends; U.S. Foreign Policy,"
February 24, 1948, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Vol. I, part 2 ("General,
The United Nations"), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976, pp. 51 Of at p.
511.
See also, David Green, The Containment of Latin America: A history of the myths
and realities of the Good Neighbor Policy, Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971 , chs. VII and VIII
at pp. 175-176, 188 (at the Chapultepec, Mexico, Hemispheric Conference in February
1 945, the U.S. called for "An Economic Charter of the Americas" that would eliminate
economic nationalism "in all its forms"; this policy stood in sharp conflict with the Latin
American stand, which a State Department officer described as "The philosophy of the
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 26
New Nationalism [that] embraces policies designed to bring about a broader distribution
of wealth and to raise the standard of living of the masses." State Department Political
Adviser Laurence Duggan wrote that "Economic nationalism is the common
denominator of the new aspirations for industrialization. Latin Americans are convinced
that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources should be the
people of that country"; the U.S. position, in contrast, was that the "first beneficiaries"
should be U.S. investors, while Latin America fulfills its service function and should not
undergo excessive industrial development that infringes on U.S. interests). And see
discussion and examples in chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 1 , 1 4, 1 5, 1 8, 1 9, 20 and
71 ; chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 42; and chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnotes 7, 8, 32
and 108.
One of the principal results of these commitments has been a sharp increase in
global economic inequality over the years. See for example, Ian Robinson, North
American Trade As If Democracy Mattered: What's Wrong with N.A.F.T.A. and What Are
the Alternatives?, Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives/ Washington:
International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund, 1993. An excerpt (Appendix
2):
[G]lobal economic inequality has grown dramatically in the last 30 years. The
United Nations Development Programme (U.N.D.P.) estimates that between 1960
and 1989, the countries containing the richest 20 percent of the world's population
increased their share of global G.N. P. from 70.2 to 82.7 percent, while the countries
containing the poorest 20 percent of the world's population saw their share fall from
2.3 to 1 .4 percent. In 1960, the countries with the top 20 percent received 30 times
more than the countries with the bottom 20 percent; by 1 989, the ratio had doubled to
about 60:1
The scale of the gap is even more striking if, instead of looking at the income of
rich and poor nations, we look at that of rich and poor people. For the 41 countries
for which the data necessary to make such a calculation were available, the
U.N.D.P. estimates that the ratio of the incomes of the richest and poorest 20 percent
of the world's people was about 140:1 in 1989. . . . [M]ore than half of the inequality
between the richest and the poorest 20 percent of the world's people -- the difference
between the 1989 ratios of 60:1 and 140:1 -- is a function not of income inequalities
among nations, but of income inequalities within nations.
53. Chomsky gives as another example of the U.S. opposing right-wing
independence in the Third World the C.I.A.'s efforts to eliminate Rafael Leonidas Trujillo
Molina, the dictator of the Dominican Republic who seized power in a military coup in
1 930 and was assassinated in 1 961 . On the C.I.A.'s involvement in Trujillo's killing, see
for example, John Stockwell [former Chief of the C.I.A.'s Angola Task Force], In Search
of Enemies: A C.I.A. Story, New York: Norton, 1978. An excerpt (p. 236):
In late November 1975 more dramatic details of C.I.A. assassination programs were
leaked to the press by the Senate investigators [in the Church and Pike Committees].
The C.I.A. had been directly involved with the killers of Rafael Trujillo of the
Dominican Republic, Ngo Diem of South Vietnam, and General Schneider of Chile. It
had plotted the deaths of Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba.
For the Congressional report on the C.I.A.'s involvement with Trujillo's assassins, see
U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to
Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 27
Report (S. Rept. 94-465), 94th Congress, 1st Session, Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1975, section MID, pp. 191-215.
54. On the new human species in northeast Brazil, see for example, Isabel
Vincent, "Life a struggle for Pygmy family," Globe & Mail (Toronto), December 1 7, 1 991 ,
p. A15. An excerpt:
A diet consisting mainly of manioc flour, beans and rice has affected
[northeastern Brazilian laborers'] mental development to the point that they have
difficulty remembering or concentrating. Fully 30.7 per cent of children in the
Northeast are born malnourished, according to Unicef and the Brazilian Ministry of
Health. ...
Brazilian medical experts have known of undernourishment in the country's
poorest region for more than two decades, but they confirmed only recently the
existence of a much more startling problem - a severe lack of protein in their diet that
is producing a population of Brazilian Pygmies known by some medical researchers
in Brazil as homens nanicos. Their height at adulthood is far less than the average
height recording by the World Health Organization and their brain capacity is 40 per
cent less than average. ... In the poorest states of the Northeast, such as Alagoas
and Piaui, homens nanicos comprise about 30 per cent of the population. . . . Much
of the Northeast comprises fertile farm land that is being taken up by large plantations
for the production of cash crops such as sugar cane.
On the desperate conditions of poverty and repression in Central America, see for
example, Cesar Chelala, "Central America's Health Plight," Christian Science Monitor,
March 22, 1990, p. 18 (the Pan American Health Organization estimates that of 850,000
children born every year in Central America, 1 00,000 will die before the age of five and
two-thirds of those who survive will suffer from malnutrition, with attendant physical or
mental development problems). See also chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 13; footnotes
1 5 and 52 of this chapter; and chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 8.
Chomsky notes that the one exception to the Central America horror story has been
Costa Rica, set on a course of state-guided development by the Jose Figueres coup of
1948 with social-democratic welfare measures combined with harsh repression of labor
and virtual elimination of the armed forces. The U.S. has always kept a wary eye on this
deviation from the regional standards, despite the suppression of labor and the favorable
conditions for foreign investors. In the 1 980s, U.S. pressures to dismantle the social-
democratic features and restore the army elicited bitter complaints from Figueres and
others who shared his commitments. While Costa Rica continues to stand apart from the
region in political and economic development, the signs of the "Central Americanization"
of Costa Rica are unmistakable. For more on Costa Rica, see for example, Noam
Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South
End, 1989, Appendix V; Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the
1980s, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994, chs. 3 to 7, and 10 (discussing
U.S.-backed privatization programs in Costa Rica in the 1980s, as well as the
militarization of the country); Anthony Winson, Coffee and Democracy in Modern Costa
Rica, New York: St. Martin's, 1 989.
55. For a historian's comparison of Japan and the Asante Kingdom, see Basil
Davidson, The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State, New York:
Times Books, 1992, ch. 2.
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 28
56. On the development of Japan's colonies, see for example, Robert Wade,
Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian
Industrialization, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. An excerpt (pp. 74-75):
New research suggests that both Taiwan and Korea had higher rates of G.D.P.
growth than Japan between 1911 and 1938. Moreover, Taiwan was already by the
end of the 1930s the biggest trader in the region, though most of the trade was with
Japan. . . . Levels of welfare improved. Indeed, some evidence suggests that the
welfare of the Taiwanese peasant in the first half of the twentieth century may have
exceeded that of the Japanese peasant. . . . The scope of primary education
expanded so that by 1 940 almost 60 percent of the relevant age group (males and
females) were attending primary school. . . .
What is unusual about Taiwan's experience (and Korea's) is that this process did
not give rise to a high concentration of capital and leadership in the hands of a
Taiwanese elite, because the Japanese kept almost complete control. This delayed
the emergence of a dynamic Taiwanese capitalist class; but it also contributed to a
more equal class and income distribution than in most other developing countries.
57. On the death penalty for capital flight in South Korea, see for example, Alice
Amsden, Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1 989, pp. 1 7-1 8 (questioning whether there has not been a lack of
compliance with the law in the 1 980s, but noting that as late as 1 987 a bankrupt
shipping magnate was believed to have committed suicide for fear of being prosecuted).
For a brief overview of Taiwan's and South Korea's defiance of the "laws of the free
market," see Alice Amsden, "East Asia's Challenge -- to Standard Economics,"
American Prospect, Summer 1990, pp. 71-77. For a longer study on South Korea, see
Amsden's Asia's Next Giant (cited above). For a study of economic development
viewing Taiwan, South Korea and Japan as a political-economic unit and suggesting
that Taiwan and Korea should be called "B.A.I.R.s" ("Bureaucratic-Authoritarian
Industrializing Regimes") rather than "N.I.C.s" ("Newly Industrializing Countries"), see
Bruce Cumings, "The origins and development of the Northeast Asian political economy:
industrial sectors, product cycles, and political consequences," International
Organization, Vol. 38, No. 1 , Winter 1 984, pp. 1 -40.
For more on this subject, see for example, Stephen Haggard, Pathways From the
Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1 990 (comparison of Latin America and East Asia); Rhys Jenkins,
"Learning from the Gang: are there Lessons for Latin America from East Asia?," Bulletin
of Latin American Research, Vol. 10, No. 1 , 1991 , pp. 37-54 at p. 38 (discussing the East
Asian N.I.C.s as a model for Latin America, citing fraudulent uses of the East Asian
N.I.C.s as triumphs of the free market, and noting the role that vast U.S. foreign aid may
have played in the growth of South Korea and Taiwan: "In the 1 950s and early 1 960s
aid accounted for over one-third of both gross investment and total imports in Taiwan,
and more than two-thirds of both variables in South Korea"); Rhys Jenkins, "The Political
Economy of Industrialization: A Comparison of Latin American and East Asian Newly
Industrializing Countries," Development and Change, Vol. 22, No. 2, April 1991, pp. 197-
231 (attributing the greater growth rate in South Korea and Taiwan to the greater relative
autonomy of the state in those countries).
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 29
See also, Robert Pastor [former National Security Council Director of Latin
American Affairs], "Securing a Democratic Hemisphere," Foreign Policy, Winter 1988-
89, pp. 41f at p. 52 (reporting that Latin America transferred some $150 billion to the
industrial West between 1 982 and 1 987, in addition to $1 00 billion of capital flight -- a
capital transfer which amounted to twenty-five times the total value of the Alliance for
Progress and fifteen times the Marshall Plan). And see footnote 38 of chapter 7 of U.P.
58. On the costs and profitability of the British Empire, see for example, John
Strachey, The End of Empire, New York: Random House, 1959, especially chs. 10 to 12
(an early investigation of the question).
On the costs of the 1 980s interventions in Central America, see for example,
Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, Inequity and Intervention: The Federal Budget and
Central America, Boston: South End, 1 986, p. 42.
Chomsky remarks that insight about the class interests underpinning empire goes
back as far as the classical economist Adam Smith in the eighteenth century ( Year 501:
The Conquest Continues, Boston: South End, 1993, p. 15):
In his classic condemnation of monopoly power and colonization, Adam Smith
has useful commentary on Britain's policies. ... He describes these policies with
some ambivalence, arguing finally that despite the great advantages that England
gained from the colonies and its monopoly of their trade, in the long run the practices
did not pay, either in Asia or North America. The argument is largely theoretical;
adequate data were not available. But however convincing the argument may be,
Smith's discussion also explains why it is not to the point.
Abandoning the colonies would be "more advantageous to the great body of the
people" of England, he concludes, "though less so to the merchants, than the
monopoly which she at present enjoys." The monopoly, "though a very grievous tax
upon the colonies, and though it may increase the revenue of a particular order of
men in Great Britain, diminishes instead of increasing that of the great body of the
people." The military costs alone are a severe burden, apart from the distortions of
investment and trade [citing Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1976 (original 1776), Book IV, ch. VII, pts. II and III, and ch. VIII,
pp. 75-181, especially pp. 131-133, 147, 180-181 (which also is quoted in footnote 1
of chapter 5 of U.P.)].
On Adam Smith, see chapter 6 of U.P. and its footnotes 10, 34, 35 and 36; footnote
1 of chapter 5 of U.P.; and chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 91 .
59. In fact, the percentage of the American population that believes that the
government is run by "a few big interests looking out for themselves" rose from 49
percent in 1984, to 71 percent in 1990, then to 79 percent by 1995.
For these figures, see Adam Clymer, "Americans In Poll View Government More
Confidently," New York Times, November 19, 1984, p. A1 (reporting a poll which found
that 49 percent of the U.S. population believed the government is "pretty much run by a
few big interests looking out for themselves," rather than "for the benefit of all." The
article's title refers to a change from the 1 980 low, though the 1 964 level of confidence --
when 64 percent of the U.S. population believed that the government is run "for the
benefit of all" -- has never again been reached); Robin Toner, "The Budget Battle," New
York Times, October 1 2, 1 990, p. A21 (by 1 990, the percentage of people who thought
that the government is run for the benefit of "a few big interests looking out for
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 30
themselves" had risen to 71 percent); R.W. Apple Jr., "Poll Shows Disenchantment With
Politicians and Politics," New York Times, August 12, 1995, section 1, p. 1 (by 1995, the
figure had risen to 79 percent). For other polls on increasing skepticism and dissidence,
see chapter 9 of U.P. and its footnotes 1 0, 44 and 45.
Understanding Power: Chapter Two Footnotes -- 31
Chapter Three
Teach-in: Evening
1 . For discussion in the U.S. business literature of the need for continued military
spending and the danger posed by alternatives to it, see footnotes 9 and 1 of this
chapter.
On the general role that military spending plays in the U.S. economy, see the text
following this footnote in U.P., and footnotes 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 and 1 of this chapter.
2. On the similar economic effects of civilian and military spending, see for
example, Paul Samuelson, Economics (Seventh Edition), New York: McGraw, 1967. An
excerpt (p. 767; emphasis in original):
Before leaving the problem of achieving and keeping full employment, we should
examine what would happen if the cold war were to give way to relaxed international
tension. If America could cut down drastically on her defense expenditures, would
that confront her with a depression problem that has merely been suppressed by
reliance on armament production? The answer here is much like that given in
Chapter 18 to the problem of some future acceleration of automation. // there is a
political will, our mixed economy can rather easily keep C + I + G [C = consumption, I
= investment, G = government spending] spending up to the level needed for full
employment without armament spending. There is nothing special about G spending
on jet bombers and intercontinental missiles that leads to a larger multiplier support of
the economy than would other kinds of G expenditure.
John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967, pp.
230-231 (adding that, to have the same effect, the civilian spending "would have to have
somewhat of the same relation to technology as the military spending it replaces").
3. Public funding of the development of computers and other advanced industries -
- and the role of the Pentagon system in the U.S. economy more generally -- is an
extremely important topic, which also is discussed at length in chapters 7 and 1 of U.P.
For sources on the Defense Department's role in fostering high-technology
industries, see for example, Kenneth Flamm, Targeting the Computer: Government
Support and International Competition, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1987,
especially ch. 3 (on the crucial role of the Pentagon in the computer industry); Laura
D'Andrea Tyson, Who's Bashing Whom?: Trade Conflict in High-Technology Industries,
Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1992. An excerpt (pp. 88-90):
In its early years, up to 100 percent of the [semiconductor] industry's output was
purchased by the military, and even as late as 1968 the military claimed nearly 40
percent. In addition, there was a derived defense demand for semiconductor output
from the military's large procurement of computer output throughout the 1960s.
Direct and indirect defense purchases reduced the risk of investment in both R&D
and equipment for semiconductor producers, who were assured that a significant part
of their output would be sold to the military. The willingness and ability of the U.S.
government to purchase chips in quantity at premium prices allowed a growing
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 1
number of companies to refine their production skills and develop elaborate
manufacturing facilities. . . .
The government continued to pay for a large share of R&D through the early
1970s, providing roughly one-half of the total between 1958 and 1970. As late as
1958, federal funding covered an estimated 85 percent of overall American R&D in
electronics. . . . [T]he military, which remained the largest single consumer of
leading-edge components throughout the 1960s, was willing to buy very expensive
products from brand-new firms that offered the ultimate in performance in lieu of an
established track record.
Winfried Ruigrock and Rob Van Tulder, The Logic of International Restructuring, New
York: Routledge, 1995. An excerpt (pp. 220-221):
[0]ver the 1950s and 1960s, the Pentagon paid more than one-third of I.B.M.'s
R&D budget. The Pentagon moreover acted as a "lead user" to I.B.M., providing the
company with scale economies and vital feedback on how to improve its computers.
In the 1950s, the Pentagon took care of half of I.B.M.'s revenues, enabling it to move
abroad and flood foreign markets with competitively priced mainframe computers.
Thus, I.B.M.'s defense contracts cross-subsidised its civilian activities at home and
abroad, and helped it to establish a near monopoly position throughout most of the
1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Along similar lines, all formerly and/or currently leading
U.S. computers, semiconductors and electronics makers in the 1993 Fortune 100
have benefited tremendously from preferential defense contracts. ... In this manner,
Pentagon cost-plus contracts functioned as a de facto industrial policy.
The same mechanism can be observed in the aerospace industry. In the 1950s,
for instance, Boeing could make use of government-owned B-52 construction
facilities to produce its B-707 model, providing the basis of its market dominance in
large civilian aircraft. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N.A.S.A.)
has often played a role comparable to the Pentagon. . . . [Government policies, in
particular defence programmes, have been an overwhelming force in shaping the
strategies and competitiveness of the world's largest firms. Even in 1 994, without
any major actual or imminent wars, ten to fourteen firms ranked in the 1 993 Fortune
100 still [conducted] at least 10 per cent of their business in closed defence markets.
David F. Noble, Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation, New
York: Knopf, 1984. An excerpt (pp. 5, 7-8):
[B]etween 1945 and 1968, the Department of Defense industrial system had supplied
$44 billion of goods and services, exceeding the combined net sales of General
Motors, General Electric, Du Pont, and U.S. Steel. ... By 1964, 90 percent of the
research and development for the aircraft industry was being underwritten by the
government, particularly the Air Force. ... In 1 964, two-thirds of the research and
development costs in the electrical equipment industry (e.g., those of G.E.,
Westinghouse, R.C.A., Raytheon, A.T.&T., Philco, I.B.M., Sperry Rand) were still
paid for by the government.
On the important government-funding organization DARPA (the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency), see for example, Elizabeth Corcoran, "Computing's
controversial patron," Science, April 2, 1993, p. 20. An excerpt:
Lean by Washington standards, the 1 00-person corps [of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA)] spurs researchers at universities and private
companies to build the stuff of future defense technologies by handing out research
grants - a total of $1.5 billion in fiscal 1992 and more this year. Among their
achievements, DARPA managers can count such key technologies as high-speed
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 2
networking, advances in integrated circuits, and the emergence of massively parallel
supercomputers. . . .
That track record has encouraged the new administration to drop the "Defense"
from DARPA's name, renaming it ARPA and anointing it a lead agency in a new effort
to help fledgling technologies gain a hold in commercial markets. But this role for
DARPA isn't altogether new: Throughout the Reagan and much of the Bush
Administrations, Congress pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into DARPA,
enabling the agency to work hand in hand with industry on technologies that would be
critical not just to defense but to U.S. competitiveness in civilian markets as well.
Andrew Pollack, "America's Answer to Japan's MITI," New York Times, March 5, 1 989,
section 3, p. 1 . An excerpt:
At a time when more industries are seeking Government help to hold their own
against Asian and European competitors, Darpa [the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency] is stepping into the void, becoming the closest thing this nation has
to Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the agency that organizes the
industrial programs that are credited with making Japan so competitive. . . . [Ujnder
the rubric of national security, the Pentagon can undertake programs like Sematech
[a research consortium to help the U.S. semiconductor industry compete] that would
arouse opposition if done by another agency in the name of industrial policy. . . .
Many fundamental computer technologies in use today can be traced to its
backing, including the basic graphics techniques that make the Apple Macintosh
computer easy to use; time-sharing, which allows several people to share a
computer, and packet-switching for routing data over comptuer networks. . . . C.
Gordon Bell, head of research at the Ardent Computer Corporation and one of the
nation's leading computer designers [states,] "They are the sole drive of computer
technology. That's it. Period." Darpa does no research on its own, only finances
work.
See also, Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful
Campaign to Deceive the Nation, New York: St. Martin's, 1 993 (on the origins of the
system of government subsidies to high-tech industry). And see chapter 2 of U.P. and its
footnotes 4 and 5; footnotes 4, 7, 9 and 1 of this chapter; the text of chapter 7 of U.P.;
and chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 22 and 23.
4. On the real function of "Star Wars," see for example, Dave Griffiths, Evert Clark,
and Alan Hall, "Why Star Wars Is A Shot In The Arm For Corporate R&D," Business
Week, April 8, 1 985, p. 77. An excerpt:
Not surprisingly, the goings-on at the Star Wars office are closely watched from
corporate boardrooms. Says Army Colonel Robert W. Parker, director of resource
management at S.D.I.'s office: "One way or another, 80% of our money is going to
the private sector." On any given day, representatives of dozens of companies and
universities visit the headquarters. . . . [Star Wars head James Abrahamson] has
given the private sector an unprecedented role in shaping a defense project. . . .
S.D.I, will need much more than existing technology if it is ever to fly. To get all
the necessary advances, it will pump 3% to 4% of its projected budget [$26 billion]
over the next five years into pushing innovations in technologies ranging from
advanced computers to optics. . . . Almost no cutting-edge technology will go without
a shot of new research funds. . . . Whether or not Star Wars comes to fruition,
Abrahamson and lonson [head of S.D.I.'s Innovative Science and Technology Office]
are convinced that it will produce a wealth of new technology. "Star Wars will create
an industrial revolution," insists lonson.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 3
Malcolme W. Browne, "The Star Wars Spinoff" (cover story), New York Times Magazine,
August 24, 1 986, p. 1 8. The subtitles on the cover and in the story read:
For better or worse, the controversial Strategic Defense Initiative is already yielding
new technologies that seem destined to change the world. ... It is estimated that
adapted Star Wars technology will eventually yield private-sector sales of $5 trillion to
$20 trillion. . . . Experts say the computers and programs S.D.I, is helping to bring
into being are powerful tools whose civilian counterparts will have incalculable civilian
value.
"Will star wars reward or retard science?," Economist (London), September 7, 1985, p.
93. An excerpt:
[T]he share of American government R&D funds going for defence . . . rose from
47% in 1980 to 70% this year. Japan, in contrast, gives less than 1% of its
government R&D funds to defence. . . . Yet the differences in research priorities
between, say, America with its defence bias and Japan with its market bias are less
stark than the raw statistics suggest. The makers of science policy in most industrial
countries are investing in the same group of core technologies -- computers,
materials and biotechnology. A review of science and technology policy by the
OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] notes that,
biotechnology apart, the Pentagon and Japan's ministry of international trade and
industry (Miti) are putting their money into very similar kinds of R&D.
In computer science, for example, both are trying to build a "fifth-generation"
computer that can give a rudimentary imitation of human thinking. Miti has
underwritten about a third of the development costs of very-large-scale-integrated
(VLSI) circuits; the Pentagon has a $300m development programme in the same
area. Miti has a $30m R&D programme on fibre optics; the Pentagon is spending
$40m a year on similar research. Both are also investing heavily in research on new
materials such as polymers and metal-matrix composites. Both are spending about
$200m on manufacturing technology, including robots and factory automation. Does
it matter whether the research sails under a military banner or a civilian one? Many
scientists who oppose star wars say that its objectives are technically impossible.
Enthusiasts counter that its ambitious aims make the SDI a perfect catalyst for the
sort of innovative research that industry cannot afford but that will pay big dividends
in the long run. . . . The search for a beam weapon to knock out missiles will spur
research on lasers that operate at short wavelengths. Spin-offs could range from X-
ray microscopes to excimer lasers that unclog blocked arteries.
See also, William J. Broad, "Star Wars Is Coming, But Where Is It Going?," New York
Times Magazine, December 6, 1 987, p. 80. An excerpt:
The best evidence indicates that ... a space-based defense has no chance of
working as envisioned by President Reagan. . . . The American Physical Society, in
an exhaustive 424-page report, found that so many breakthroughs were needed for
overall Star Wars development that no deployment decision should even be
considered for another decade or more. The physicists, Nobel laureates among
them, said that the survival of any space-based antimissile system against enemy
attack was "highly questionable."
Nick Cook, "S&T: fuel for the economic engine," Jane's Defence Weekly, January 28,
1995, pp. 19f; Robert Reich, "High Tech, A Subsidiary Of Pentagon Inc.," Op-Ed, New
York Times, May 29, 1 985, p. A23. And see footnote 3 of this chapter.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 4
5. On the Pentagon budget being higher in real terms in 1 995 than it was under the
Nixon administration at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, see footnote 75 of chapter 8
of U.P.
On real wages for college-educated workers declining in 1 987 after the Pentagon
budget declined in 1 986, see footnote 42 of chapter 9 of U.P.
6. For a Depression-era economist making the point about fascisms, see for
example, Robert A. Brady, Business As A System of Power, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1943, especially pp. 5-7, 16-17, 295.
7. On the failure of the New Deal but success of military spending in ending the
Depression, see for example, Richard B. DuBoff, Accumulation and Power: An
Economic History of the United States, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1989, ch. 6. An
excerpt (pp. 91 , 98):
Despite the efforts of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, real G.N. P. [Gross National
Product] did not regain its 1929 volume until 1939, when per capita income was still 7
percent below its 1929 level. Unemployment, reaching an estimated 25 percent of
the labor force in 1933, averaged nearly 19 percent from 1931 through 1940 and
never dipped below 10 percent until late 1941. The anemic nature of the recovery
during the 1930s was a direct result of the inadequate increases in government
support for the economy. . . .
Only the Second World War ended the Great Depression. "Rearmament"
commenced in June 1 940 and over the next year, before the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, military spending jumped more than six-fold, to 1 1 percent of the
G.N. P. It rose to 42 percent of G.N. P. in 1943-44. Under this mighty stimulus, real
national product increased 65 percent from 1940 through 1944, industrial production
by 90 percent. . . . What had really happened between 1929 and 1933 is that the
institutions of nineteenth-century free market growth broke down, beyond repair. . . .
The tumultuous passage from the depression of the 1930s to the total economic
mobilization of the 1 940s was the watershed in twentieth century capitalism. After
that, nothing in the macroeconomy would ever be the same; there was no going back
to the days of a pure, practically unregulated capitalist economic order.
Richard Barnet, The Economy of Death, New York: Atheneum, 1 969, at p. 1 1 6
(summarizing the evolution of the military spending system, and quoting General Electric
President Charles E. Wilson on the need to develop a "permanent war economy").
On corporate executives running the U.S. economy during World War II, see for
example, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., "The Role of Business in the United States: A
Historical Survey," Daedalus, Winter 1 969, pp. 23-40 at p. 36. See also chapter 2 of
U.P. and its footnote 5; footnote 9 of this chapter; and chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote
94.
8. For warnings about the necessity for government intervention in the economy
after the war, see for example, Paul A. Samuelson, "Unemployment Ahead: (I.) A
Warning to the Washington Expert," New Republic, September 11,1 944, pp. 297-299;
Paul A. Samuelson, "Unemployment Ahead: (II.) The Coming Economic Crisis," New
Republic, September 1 8, 1 944, pp. 333-335. An excerpt:
Every month, every day, every hour the federal government is pumping millions
and billions of dollars into the bloodstream of the American economy. It is as if we
were building a T.V.A. [Tennessee Valley Authority, a massive New Deal public
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 5
works project] every Tuesday. Did I say every Tuesday? Two T.V.A.'s every
Tuesday would be nearer the truth. We have reached the present high levels of
output and employment only by means of $100 billion of government expenditures, of
which $50 billion represent deficits. In the usual sense of the word, the present
prosperity is "artificial," although no criticism is thereby implied. Any simple statistical
calculation will show that the automobile, aircraft, ship-building and electronics
industries combined, comprising the fields with rosiest postwar prospects, cannot
possibly maintain their present level of employment, or one-half, or one-third of it. . . .
[I]t is demonstrable that the immediate demobilization period presents a grave
challenge to our economy. . . . Our economic system is living on a rich diet of
government spending. It will be found cheaper in the long run, and infinitely
preferable in human terms, to wean it gradually. ... For better or worse, the
government under any party will have to undertake extensive action in the years
ahead.
"Shall we have Airplanes?," Fortune, January 1948, pp. 77f. An excerpt (emphasis in
original):
[The U.S. aircraft industry] is today producing at a rate that is less than 3 per cent
of its wartime peak. . . . [Its spokesmen] speak frequently of "free enterprise," but
they speak just as frequently of "long-range planning." It is crystal clear to them that
they cannot live without one kind or another of governmental support ~ yet "subsidy"
is a shocking word to them. ... Its respected heads . . . freely play the game of
nagging and chiding the government, but it then transpires that their reproaches are
made because the government has not gone far enough toward stating "clearly and
frankly" its "obligation to help develop new and improved air transports and efficient
networks of air transportation," as well as fostering new programs for military planes.
Every one of these proposals acknowledges the inability of unaided "private"
capital to venture any deeper into the technological terra incognita of the aircraft
industry. Every one acknowledges that only the credit resources of the U.S.A. are
sufficient to keep the aircraft industry going: to enable it to hire its engineers, buy its
materials, pay wages to its labor force, compensate its executives ~ and pay
dividends to its stockholders. The fact seems to remain, then, that the aircraft
industry today cannot satisfactorily exist in a pure, competitive, unsubsidized, "free-
enterprise" economy. It never has been able to. Its huge customer has always been
the United States Government, whether in war or in peace.
"Aviation RFC (Reconstruction Finance Corporation)?," Business Week, January 31 ,
1948, p. 28 ("the aircraft builders, even with tax carrybacks, are near disaster. . . . Right
now the government is their only possible savior -- with orders, subsidies, or loans").
See also, Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful
Campaign to Deceive the Nation, New York: St. Martin's, 1 993, at p. 2 (arguing with
substantial documentation that the Truman administration manipulated "war scares" for
the purpose of sustaining and expanding U.S. industry through the military system; citing
business magazines and newspapers of the period that "made it quite unmistakable that
the aircraft industry would have collapsed had it not been for the big procurement orders
that came in the wake of the war scare of 1 948").
In the following years, the business press routinely recognized that continued high
levels of military spending were essential to the U.S. economy. See for example, Ward
Gates, "Approaching Recession in American Business?," Magazine of Wall Street, May
31 , 1 952, p. 252. An excerpt:
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 6
[R]earmament has played a large part in the increase in world trade directly after
Korea and remains one of the basic elements in the future of world business. No
better illustration could be had than the effects of the U.S. withdrawal from the
primary markets when it had about completed its stock-piling program. When this
occurred the primary markets practically fell apart. It is obvious that foreign
economies as well as our own are now mainly dependent on the scope of continued
arms spending in this country. . . . Basic to continued high activity in industry is the
government program of defense expenditures, actual and projected.
Ward Gates, "Major Economic Adjustment -- If Shooting War Stops?," Magazine of Wall
Street, July 28, 1 951 , p. 436. An excerpt:
Cynics both here and abroad have claimed, and not without some justification,
that American business interests "fear peace." The moral aspect of this dilemma
need not concern us but, on a realistic basis, there is no question that the prospect of
peace is altering the thinking of economists, business men and investors. For that
reason, it is imperative that a new view be taken of the over-all situation and to see
whether the prospective ending of hostilities will produce marked changes in the
industrial, business and financial picture. . . .
While the prospect of peace in Korea has exerted an unsettling act and probably
will continue to do so during the next few months, we must consider whether these
comparatively adverse conditions will not disappear as the enormous armaments
program acquires momentum. . . . [T]he very high continued rate of arms production
will greatly tend to support the economy and as long as this feature remains it is
difficult to see the possibility for a genuine recession generally in the period ahead,
although individual industries will have to contend with the uncertainties presented by
the cessation of hostilities.
See also, "Newsgram From the Nation's Capital," U.S. News and World Report,
May 26, 1950, pp. 7-8. An excerpt (emphasis in original):
Money Supply will continue to be abundant, rising. Population will go on rising.
Households will grow proportionately faster than population. "Cold war, "at the same
time, will go on, uninterrupted. It's in that little combination of facts that Government
planners figure they have found the magic formula for almost endless good times.
They now are beginning to wonder if there may not be something in perpetual motion
after all.
The formula, as the planners figure it, can work this way:
Rising money supply, rising population are ingredients of good times. Cold war is
the catalyst. Cold war is an automatic pump primer. Turn a spigot, and the public
clamors for more arms spending. Turn another, the clamor ceases.
A little deflation, unemployment, signs of harder times, and the spigot is turned to
the left. Money flows out, money supply rises, activity revives. High activity
encourages people to have bigger families. . . . Good times come back, boom signs
appear, prices start to rise.
A little inflation, signs of shortages, speculation, and the spigot is turned to the
right. Cold-war talk is eased. Economy is proposed. Money is tightened a little by
tighter rein on Government-guaranteed credit, by use of devices in other fields.
Things tend to calm down, to stabilize.
That's the formula in use. It's been working fairly well to date. . . . Truman
confidence, cockiness, is based on this "Truman formula." Truman era of good
times, President is told, can run much beyond 1952. Cold-war demands, if fully
exploited, are almost limitless.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 7
And see chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnotes 4 and 5; footnotes 3, 4, 7, 9 and 1 of this
chapter; and chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 22 and 23.
9. For an articulation in the business press of the problems with domestic public
works and social welfare spending, see "From Cold War to Cold Peace," Business
Week, February 12, 1949, p. 19. An excerpt:
But there's a tremendous difference between welfare pump-priming and military
pump-priming. . . . Military spending doesn't really alter the structure of the economy.
It goes through the regular channels. As far as business is concerned, a munitions
order from the government is much like an order from a private customer. But the
kind of welfare and public works spending that Truman plans does alter the economy.
It makes new channels of its own. It creates new institutions. It redistributes income.
It shifts demand from one industry to another. It changes the whole economic
pattern.
Similarly, business leaders also feared that the public would demand ownership of
publicly-subsidized industries if they became involved in or informed about industrial
policy-making. See for example, Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of
1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation, New York: St. Martin's, 1 993. An
excerpt (p. 37):
Although the aircraft companies could not have been more eager to tap the U.S.
treasury, their executives were also enormously concerned that any federal funds
they might receive not even resemble - much less be called ~ a subsidy. Their
reasoning was the same that impelled William Allen, the president of the Boeing
Airplane Company, to insist that any computation of the airplane makers' wartime
profits be on the basis of sales, not investments. If the taxpayers were ever to
realize how much the creation, expansion and current well-being of the aircraft
industry depended on money they had provided, Allen and his counterparts feared,
their outrage might result in a demand for nationalization. Advocates of such a
measure might plausibly argue that as long as the public was expected to continue
footing the bill to keep the airplane builders in operation, it might as well own that for
which it was being forced to pay. . . . The trick, therefore, was for the industry to
achieve the beneficial effect of a subsidy without the appearance of having taken
one.
Earlier, the same considerations applied with respect to the government's
foreign-spending programs -- which ultimately became military-spending programs,
as discussed in footnotes 4 and 5 of chapter 2 of U.P. - namely, business leaders
saw them as an economic stimulus that avoided the dangers of increased domestic
social-welfare spending. See for example, David W. Eakins, "Business Planners
and America's Postwar Expansion," in David Horowitz, ed., Corporations and the
Cold War, New York: Monthly Review, 1969, pp. 143-171. An excerpt (pp. 150,
156,167-168):
Corporate liberal businessmen were generally agreed that the government should
continue to help sustain full production and employment, but most of them were
opposed to more internal planning - that is, to an expanded New Deal at home. . . .
In 1944, the National Planning Association offered a foreign economic policy plan on
the scale of that proposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall three years
later. It called for a great expansion of government-supported foreign investment,
and it did so strictly on the basis of American domestic needs, using, of course, none
of the later justifications that were to be based on a Cold War with Russia. . . . The
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 8
corporate liberal planners who began to work out the system during World War II [in
groups such as the National Planning Association, the Twentieth Century Fund, and
the Committee for Economic Development] were aware of the political potential of
foreign aid -- in the sense that it would help create "the kind of economic and political
world that the United States would like to see prevail." But their scheme had broader
implications. It stemmed, first of all, from a well-learned lesson of the New Deal, that
it was the duty of government to prevent the stagnation of the capitalist economy by
large-scale compensatory spending. But that spending, if "free enterprise" at home
was to be saved, had to be largely directed abroad. . . .
[The Marshall Plan's program of massive] foreign aid emerged to provide an
elegantly symmetrical answer to several dilemmas. It was a form of government
compensatory spending that avoided revived New Deal spending at home. ... To
have turned inward to solve American problems - to allow foreigners to choose their
own course - might very well have meant, as [senior State Department and World
Bank official] Will Clayton put it, "radical readjustments in our entire economic
structure . . . changes which could hardly be made under our democratic free
enterprise system." These men were fearful of the expanded New Deal solution to
continued economic growth precisely because they felt that such a program would be
compelled to move far beyond the most radical projections of New Deal planners.
For a more detailed description of the origins of the post-war military economy, and
of military spending's general role as a "floor under the economy" to prevent the return to
depression conditions, see Fred Block, The Origins of International Economic Disorder:
A Study of United States International Monetary Policy from World War II to the Present,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 977, especially pp. 1 02-1 08.
For other articulations of these themes, see for example, Bernard Nossiter, "Arms
Firms See Postwar Spurt," Washington Post, December 8, 1 968, pp. A1 , A1 8. This
article quotes Samuel F. Downer, Financial Vice-President of the L.T.V. Aerospace
Corporation, explaining why "the post-[Vietnam] war world must be bolstered with
military orders":
"It's basic," he says. "Its selling appeal is defense of the home. This is one of the
greatest appeals the politicians have to adjusting the system. If you're the President
and you need a control factor in the economy, and you need to sell this factor, you
can't sell Harlem and Watts but you can sell self-preservation, a new environment.
We're going to increase defense budgets as long as those bastards in Russia are
ahead of us. The American people understand this."
Robert Reich, "High Tech, A Subsidiary Of Pentagon Inc.," Op-Ed, New York Times,
May 29, 1 985, p. A23 ("national defense has served as a convenient pretext for the kind
of planning that would be ideologically suspect if undertaken on its own behalf"); John
Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967. An
excerpt (pp. 228-229):
In 1929, Federal expenditures for all goods and services amounted to $3.5 billion;
by 1939 they were $12.5 billion; in 1965 they were approximately $57 billion. In
relation to Gross National Product they increased from 1 .7 per cent in 1 929 to 8.4 per
cent in 1965 and earlier in the same decade they had been substantially in excess of
1 per cent. Although the cliche is to the contrary, this increase has been with strong
approval of the industrial system. There is also every reason to regard it, and the
social attitudes and beliefs by which it is sustained, as reflecting substantial
adaptation to the goals of the mature corporation and its technostructure. For the
cliche has noticed only the ritual objection of business to government expenditure.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 9
Much of this objection comes from small businessmen outside the industrial system
or it reflects entrepreneurial attitudes rather than those of the technostructure. And it
is directed at only a small part of public expenditure.
All business objection to public expenditure automatically exempts expenditures
for defense or those, as for space exploration, which are held to serve equivalent
goals of international policy. It is these expenditures which account for by far the
largest part of the increase in Federal expenditure over the past thirty years. . . .
Legislators who most conscientiously reflect the views of the business community
regularly warn that insufficient funds are being spent on particular weapons. No more
than any other social institution does the industrial system disapprove of what is
important for its success. Those who have thought it suspicious of Keynesian fiscal
policy have failed to see how precisely it has identified and supported what is
essential for that policy.
See also, Richard B. DuBoff, Accumulation and Power: An Economic History of the
United States, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1989, ch. 6, especially pp. 98-100; Gabriel
Kolko, Main Currents in American History, New York: Harper and Row, 1 976, pp. 31 6-
330. And see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 1 ; chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnotes 4
and 5; and footnotes 7, 8, 1 and 1 1 of this chapter.
1 0. On the importance of military spending as a cushion under the economy, see
for example, Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful
Campaign to Deceive the Nation, New York: St. Martin's, 1 993. An excerpt (pp. 258-
260):
In supporting bigger armaments budgets, business journals repeatedly returned
to the idea that military procurement could prevent or overcome recessions by
keeping overall levels of spending high. Even as early as the spring of 1948, The
Magazine of Wall Street was beginning to cast the matter in exactly those terms: "In
fact, the contemplated scale of spending . . . may be just enough, together with tax
reduction and other outlays such as foreign aid, to act as a cushion against a
business decline" [see E.A. Krauss, "The Effect on Our Economy," Magazine of Wall
Street, April 24, 1948, pp. 60, 100]. . . . "In a broad manner, the enlarged Government
spending will inject new strength into the entire economy" [see Frederick K. Dodge,
"Which Securities under Preparedness?," Magazine of Wall Street, April 24, 1 948, p.
98]....
Later in the year, Business Week gave this idea its official imprimatur [see
"Where's That War Boom," Business Week, October 30, 1948, p. 23]. . . .
"Industrialists generally are in accord with the military's program of preparedness,"
Steel noted as early as April of 1948, specifically citing "C.E. Wilson, president of
General Electric Co.," as a case in point [see "Industry Sizing Up New Military
Program, Steel, April 5, 1948, p. 46]. . . . "The country is now geared to a $13-billion
military budget," [Business Week] noted ... "a big - and reliable ~ prop under
business. For the country as a whole," a Pentagon budget of this size guaranteed "a
high level of federal spending," while for "individual suppliers, it means a solid backlog
of orders" [see "Defense Buying Hits Stride," Business Week, March 18, 1950, pp.
19-20]. The following month, the editors again drew the connection between fueling
the arms race and maintaining a stable capitalist order: "Pressure for more
government spending is mounting. And the prospect is that Congress will give in. . . .
The reason is a combination of concern over tense Russian relations, and growing
fear of a rising level of unemployment here at home" [see "Washington Outlook,"
Business Week, April 15, 1950, p. 15].
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 10
This important function of military spending in the economy continues to the
present. For one study of its influence, see Maryellen R. Kelley and Todd A. Watkins,
"The myth of the specialized military contractor," Technology Review, April 1 , 1995, pp.
52f. An excerpt:
[0]ur research indicates that the image of a few highly specialized defense
contractors occupying an enclave walled off from commercial manufacturing is
largely a myth. . . . [T]he vast majority of defense contractors serve both military and
civilian customers. What's more, strengths developed under the umbrella of national
security are being tapped to benefit firms' commercial work, and vice versa. ... Far
from being responsible for most of the nation's military manufacturing, [the] major
defense contractors stand at the top of diverse and deep supply structures. . . . This
supplier base encompasses a significant percentage of all U.S. manufacturing
companies. In a 1991 survey of firms in 21 durable goods industries, as well as an
analysis of 1988 data gathered by the Census Bureau, we found that fully half of all
plants make parts, components, or materials for military equipment.
See also, Maryellen Kelley and Todd A. Watkins, "In from the cold: prospects for the
conversion of the defense industrial base," Science, April 28, 1 995, pp. 525f; Karen
Pennar, "Pentagon Spending Is the Economy's Biggest Gun," Business Week, October
21 , 1985, pp. 60, 64 ("Big [armaments] contractors like Lockheed and McDonnell
Douglas like to use defense spending as a cushion for times when other business gets
weak"). And see footnotes 3, 4, 7 and 9 of this chapter; and chapter 10 of U.P. and its
footnotes 22 and 23.
Chomsky points out that military-Keynesian initiatives have not been limited to the
U.S. defense budget: a substantial proportion of the U.S. foreign aid budget is devoted to
direct grants or loans to foreign governments for the purchase of U.S. military equipment,
and there are many other programs shaped to serve the same ends. On U.S. armaments
exports and the scale of U.S. military spending, see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnote 75.
11. Air Force Secretary Symington's exact words were: "The word to talk was not
'subsidy'; the word to talk was 'security.'" He made the remark in a discussion following
an Air Force presentation to the Combat Aviation Subcommittee of the Congressional
Aviation Policy Board, on January 21 , 1 948. See Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and
the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation, New York: St.
Martin's, 1 993, pp. 48, 81 , 31 9 n.7.
1 2. On the Reagan administration's immediate selection of Libya as its target, see
for example, "Excerpts from Haig's Remarks at First News Conference as Secretary of
State," New York Times, January 29, 1981 , p. A10 (announcing that, under the new
Reagan administration, "international terrorism will take the place of human rights in our
concern because it is the ultimate abuse of human rights"). See generally, Edward S.
Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda, Boston: South
End, 1982; Edward S. Herman and Gerry O'Sullivan, The "Terrorism Industry: The
Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror, New York: Pantheon, 1 990;
Alexander George, ed., Western State Terrorism, New York: Routledge, 1 991 .
1 3. On Qaddafi's record of terrorism at the time, see for example, William D.
Perdue, Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear, New York:
Praeger, 1989, chs. 3 and 6, especially p. 1 14 ("Amnesty International attributed 14
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 1 1
killings of political opponents (4 abroad) to Libya through 1 985"). In contrast, torture
victims and people killed in the U.S. -client state of El Salvador alone numbered 50,000.
For comparison with victims of government terrorism in most-favored U.S. ally states
such as El Salvador, Indonesia, Israel, and Colombia, see the text of U.P. and sources in
these notes, throughout.
14. Chomsky notes that the U.S. government's Operation MONGOOSE terrorism
campaign against Cuba -- launched primarily from Miami -- alone dwarfs terrorism
coming from the Arab world. On MONGOOSE, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 21
and 22. On the international terrorism coming from Washington, see examples
throughout the text of U.P. and sources in these notes.
Chomsky explains his point about the main centers of international terrorism (The
Washington Connection and Third World Fascism -- The Political Economy of Human
Rights: Volume I, Boston: South End, 1 979, pp. 85-87):
The words "terror" and "terrorism" have become semantic tools of the powerful in
the Western world. In their dictionary meaning, these words refer to "intimidation" by
the "systematic use of violence" as a means of both governing and opposing existing
governments. But current Western usage has restricted the sense, on purely
ideological grounds, to the retail violence of those who oppose the established order.
In the Third World, the United States set itself firmly against revolutionary change
after World War II, and has struggled to maintain the disintegrating post-colonial
societies within the "Free World," often in conflict with the main drift of social and
political forces within those countries. This conservative and counter-revolutionary
political objective has defined the spectrum of acceptable and unacceptable violence
and bloodshed. From this perspective, killings associated with revolution represent a
resort to violence which is both reprehensible, and improper as a means for bringing
about social change. Such atrocities are carried out by "terrorists. . . ." The same
Orwellian usage was standard on the home front during the Vietnam War. Students,
war protesters, Black Panthers, and associated other dissidents were effectively
branded as violent and terroristic by a government that dropped more than five million
tons of bombs over a dozen year period on a small peasant country with no means of
self-defense. Beating of demonstrators, infiltration of dissident organizations,
extensive use of agent provocateur tactics, even F.B.I, complicity in political
assassination were not designated by any such terms [on these tactics by the U.S.
government, see chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 33].
Elsewhere, Chomsky comments about his use of the word "terrorism" (Pirates and
Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World, Boston: South End, 1991 , pp. 9-10):
The term "terrorism" came into use at the end of the eighteenth century, primarily
referring to violent acts of governments designed to ensure popular submission. That
concept is plainly of little benefit to the practitioners of state terrorism, who, holding
power, are in a position to control the system of thought and expression. The original
sense has therefore been abandoned, and the term "terrorism" has come to be
applied mainly to "retail terrorism" by individuals or groups. Whereas the term was
once applied to emperors who molest their own subjects and the world, it is now
restricted to thieves who molest the powerful [this reference to "emperors" and
"thieves" refers to a story told by Saint Augustine, in which a pirate was asked by
Alexander the Great, "How dare you molest the seas?" - to which the pirate replied:
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 12
"How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a little ship only, I am
called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor"].
Extracting ourselves from the system of indoctrination, we will use the term
"terrorism" to refer to the threat or the use of violence to intimidate or coerce
(generally for political ends), whether it is the wholesale terrorism of the emperor or
the retail terrorism of the thief. The pirate's maxim explains the recently-evolved
concept of "international terrorism" only in part. It is necessary to add a second
feature: an act of terrorism enters the canon only if it is committed by "their side," not
ours.
1 5. For one of the major texts in the propaganda campaign about "Kremlin-
directed" terrorism, see Claire Sterling, The Terror Network: The Secret War of
International Terrorism, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Reader's Digest Press, 1 981 ,
especially pp. 1 -24, ch. 1 6, and Epilogue, at pp. 291 -293. This book's unifying theme is
that all international terrorism has been part of a single, carefully-designed "Soviet
enterprise" whose "primary value to the Kremlin lay in [its] resolute efforts to weaken,
demoralize, confuse, humiliate, frighten, paralyze, and if possible, dismantle the West's
democratic societies." Particularly noteworthy is Sterling's criticism of Western
European governments for failing, out of timidity, to acknowledge this "Soviet design"
even though their intelligence services "may have had pieces of the puzzle in hand for
years."
The New York Times and Washington Post both published condensed versions
and excerpts from the book in their Sunday Magazine sections. See Claire Sterling,
"Terrorism: Tracing the International Network," New York Times, March 1 , 1981 , section
6, p. 16 ("There is massive proof that the Soviet Union and its surrogates, over the last
decade, have provided the weapons, training and sanctuary for a worldwide terror
network aimed at the destabilization of Western democratic society"); Claire Sterling,
"The Strange Case of Henri Curiel," Washington Post, March 15, 1981 , Magazine
section, p. 26. For samples of the mainstream reception of Sterling's book, see for
example, Daniel Schorr, "Tracing the Thread of Terrorism," New York Times, May 17,
1 981 , section 7, p. 1 3 (an "important study of terrorism," though flawed); Ronald
Taggiasco, "The case for a global conspiracy of terrorism," Business Week, April 27,
1981 , p. 9 ("although Sterling's evidence is circumstantial, it is overwhelmingly
compelling in its logic").
For instant exposure of Sterling's book as a fraud and extensive discussion, see
Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda,
Boston: South End, 1982, ch. 2.
1 6. Chomsky wrote in the 1 981 introduction to Towards A New Cold War: Essays
on the Current Crisis and How We Got There, New York: Pantheon, 1 982 (p. 1 7):
The Reagan Administration also experimented with another device: "International
terrorism," organized by the Soviet Union, is the key problem of the modern world
and the mechanism by which the Soviet Union aims at global conquest. . . . [T]he
Reagan Administration is seeking to raise the level of international terrorism and to
create a mood of crisis at home and abroad, seizing whatever opportunities present
themselves. . . . [T]he reasons are not difficult to discern. They are implicit in the
domestic policies that constitute the core of the Reagan Administration program:
transfer of resources from the poor to the rich by slashing social welfare programs
and by regressive tax policies, and a vast increase in the state sector of the
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 13
economy in the familiar mode: by subsidizing and providing a guaranteed market for
high-technology production, namely, military production
1 7. For Newsweek's reference to the disinformation campaign, see "A Plan to
Overthrow Kaddafi," Newsweek, August 3, 1981 , p. 19. An excerpt:
The details of the plan were sketchy, but it seemed to be a classic C.I.A.
destabilization campaign. One element was a "disinformation" program designed to
embarrass Kaddafi and his government. Another was the creation of a "counter
government" to challenge his claim to national leadership. A third -- potentially the
most risky -- was an escalating paramilitary campaign, probably by disaffected
Libyan nationals, to blow up bridges, conduct small-scale guerrilla operations and
demonstrate that Kaddafi was opposed by an indigenous political force.
On other Reagan administration press manipulations, see footnote 38 of this chapter.
1 8. For some of the lunatic disinformation stories about Libya -- keeping only to a
single journal's coverage -- see for example, Michael Reese, "Uniting Against Libya,"
Newsweek, October 1 9, 1 981 , p. 43. An excerpt:
NEWSWEEK has also learned that Kaddafi . . . [is] ordering the assassination of the
U.S. ambassador to Italy. . . . U.S. intelligence also picked up evidence that Kaddafi
had hatched yet another assassination plot - this time against President Reagan.
Fay Willey, "Kaddafi's Latest Plot," Newsweek, November 9, 1981 , p. 29. An excerpt:
U.S. intelligence believes that Libyan strongman Muammar Kaddafi is planning
terrorist attacks on four American embassies in Western Europe.
John Brecher, "New Threats From Kaddafi," Newsweek, November 30, 1 981 , p. 51 . An
excerpt:
[S]enior American officials told NEWSWEEK, Kaddafi's talk appears to be more than
bluster. These officials say Kaddafi has expanded his hit list to include Vice
President George Bush, Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger ~ and that he has equipped special assassination squads with
bazookas, grenade launchers and even portable SAM-7 missiles capable of bringing
down the President's plane.
"The Kaddafi Hit Squad At Large?," Newsweek, December 14, 1981, p. 36. An excerpt:
[A]n assassination squad dispatched by Libyan strongman Muammar Kaddafi [has]
entered the United States.
David M. Alpern, "Coping With a Plot to Kill the President," Newsweek, December 21 ,
1981, p. 16. An excerpt:
Security around [President Reagan] tightened amid intelligence reports that placed
his potential assassins either in the country or on its borders preparing to strike.
See also, James Kelly, "Searching for Hit Teams: There was no proof, but there
was sufficient reason to believe," Time, December 21 , 1981 , p. 16 (summing up the
status of the hitmen story in its title, while nonetheless continuing its publicity); Duncan
Campbell and Patrick Forbes, "Tale of Anti-Reagan Hit Team Was 'Fraud'," New
Statesman (U.K.), August 1 6, 1 985, p. 6 (reporting that a secret official U.S. list of
fourteen alleged "Libyan terrorists" was in fact a list of prominent members of the
Lebanese Shiite party Amal, including its leader Nabih Berri and the religious leader of
the Lebanese Shiite community, with most of the rest being aging Lebanese politicians;
to compound the absurdity, the Amal party is passionately anti-Libyan).
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 14
On a later Reagan administration claim that Libya was planning to overthrow the
government of the Sudan, see for example, Bernard Gwertzman, "Shultz Asserts Libyan
Threat Has 'Receded,'" New York Times, February 21 , 1 983, p. A1 . An excerpt:
Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that what the Reagan
Administration believed last week was a military threat by Libya against the Sudan
had now "receded. . . ." Mr. Shultz, in his television appearance, said, "The President
of the United States acted quickly and decisively and effectively, and at least for the
moment Qaddafi is back in his box where he belongs." His comments were in line
with the White House effort Friday and Saturday to convince reporters privately that
Mr. Reagan was actually in charge of the operation, even though at his news
conference on Wednesday he made factual errors. . . .
Administration officials have said the Awacs [that attacked Libya] were sent at the
explicit request of President Mubarak, but Egyptian officials and news organizations
have denied in recent days that any such request was made or that any threat to the
Sudan exists. The Libyans have denied any plans to attack the Sudan [across six
hundred miles of desert]. The lack of any tangible threat from Libya was reminiscent
of the Administration's problems in late 1 981 when it aroused considerable agitation in
Washington over reports of a Libyan "hit squad" being sent to the United States to try
to kill high officials. Nothing happened, and it was unclear whether the publicity
forced cancellation of the Libyan plans or whether the Administration's information
was faulty in the first place.
For a later exposure of some of the U.S. government's disinformation campaigns,
see Jonathan Alter, "A Bodyguard of Lies," Newsweek, October 13, 1986, p. 43. An
excerpt:
[l]n August national-security adviser John Poindexter sent President Reagan a memo
outlining what Poindexter called a "disinformation program" aimed at destabilizing
Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi by generating false reports that the United States
and Libya were again on a collision course. . . . Evidence that the disinformation
campaign was under way first turned up on Aug. 25 in The Wall Street Journal. . . .
"We relied on high-level officials who hyped some of this," [Wall Street Journal
Washington Bureau Chief Albert] Hunt says. . . . [The lies] were profoundly
disturbing, even to journalists hardened by a lifetime of covering dissembling officials.
Edward P. Haley, Qaddafi and the United States Since 1969, New York: Praeger, 1984,
pp. 257-264 (bitterly anti-Qaddafi study, summarizing the various stages of the
"propaganda campaign designed to discredit the Libyan leader and turn him into an
international outlaw"; making a praiseworthy effort to take the comedy seriously).
19. For Reagan's own remarks linking Qaddafi and the contra vote, see for
example, Jonathan Fuerbringer, "Contras' Backers Lose A Close Vote On House
Debate," New York Times, April 16, 1986, p. A1 . An excerpt:
Before the House votes today, President Reagan, pressing his case for $100
million in aid to the rebels [i.e. the contras], said he wanted to remind the House that
Libya had sent money, weapons and advisers to the Nicaraguan Government.
Addressing a group of business leaders a day after American planes bombed Libyan
targets, President Reagan said the Libyan leader, Col. Muamar el-Qaddafi, was
helping Nicaragua in an effort to "bring his war home to the United States."
"I would remind the House voting this week that this archterrorist has sent $400
million and an arsenal of weapons and advisers into Nicaragua," Mr. Reagan said.
"He has bragged that he is helping the Nicaraguans because they fight America on
its own ground."
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 15
"Reagan's Remarks On Raid," New York Times, April 16, 1986, p. A20 (transcript of
Reagan's speech to the American Business Conference, asserting a link between
Qaddafi and Nicaragua).
See also, Edward P. Haley, Qaddafi and the United States Since 1969, New York:
Praeger, 1984. An excerpt (p. 8):
[The Reagan administration was] exploiting the "Libyan menace" in order to win
support for steps it wished to take in pursuit of Secretary [of State Alexander] Haig's
"strategic consensus" against the Soviet Union, and as an element in the
arrangements necessary for the creation of a Rapid Deployment Force [an
intervention force targeted primarily at the Middle East, now the "Central Command"].
Chomsky adds that, in addition to the Reagan administration's seeking to create public
hysteria in order to help ram through its policies, Qaddafi also was opposed because,
increasingly, he was standing in the way of the U.S. "strategic consensus" in North
Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere -- he was supporting (along with the United
Nations) Polisario, the indigenous resistance movement to Morocco's illegal annexation
of Western Sahara, as well as anti-U.S. elements in the Sudan; forging a union with
Morocco; intervening in Chad; and in general being an obstacle to U.S. objectives in the
region and interfering with its efforts to impose its will elsewhere.
20. On the legal backdrop of the Gulf of Sidra bombing, including U.S. objections
to allowing the World Court to decide the dispute, see for example, R.C. Longworth,
"Victory at Sea," Chicago Tribune, March 30, 1 986, p. C1 . An excerpt:
The Navy sailed into battle off Libya last week in defense of a treaty that the
United States, almost alone in the world, has refused to sign. . . . The treaty in
question is the Law of the Sea Treaty, signed in 1982 by 156 nations but not by the
U.S., Britain and West Germany. The treaty establishes what part of the world's
oceans are high seas, open to any shipping, and what part belongs to the countries
along the coast. ... It was ostensibly in defense of these provisions that the Navy
last week steamed across Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy's "line of death" and
into the Gulf of Sidra. There were those, in Washington and elsewhere, who
suspected that President Reagan invited the fracas because he was angered by the
House of Representatives' refusal on March 2 to give him $100 million for the
Nicaraguan antigovernment rebels, and that he vented his rage on an easy unpopular
target -- Khadafy. To such critics, the legal justification for the Navy's voyage into
the gulf was only a figleaf for the presidential snit. The administration denied this and
said the President's move amounted to a vital testing of the freedom of the high seas.
The facts are these: First, the Law of the Sea Treaty gives every coastal nation
sovereignty over the oceans up to 1 2 miles out from its shore. Ships of other nations
may pass through these "territorial waters" under the right of "innocent passage,"
which means they must move with "dispatch" and pose no threat to the coastal
nation. ... But Alfred Rubin, professor of international law at Tufts University, said
the concepts are so vague that, though "Libya is probably wrong, its claim is not
absurd. We may be within our legal rights, but we may not be." Rubin's argument
with the Reagan mission, however, has another basis. He notes that Libya did not
shoot at U.S. ships but at the airplanes launched from them. The ships may have
been exercising their right to the high seas, but Libya may have been exercising
another well-established right -- the "law of self-defense." That law, as stated by
Daniel Webster in 1 842, permits action against a threat that is "instant, overwhelming
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 16
and leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation." Rubin argues that
the appearance of U.S. planes off Libya's coast may have amounted to such a threat,
considering the U.S. government's official and open hostility to Libya. At any rate,
Rubin argues, the United Nations Charter provides for more peaceful means, the
World Court, for settling such disputes as navigation rights, even though this would
be "awkward," as one expert put it, for the U.S. after it denied the court's jurisdiction
last year in a lawsuit brought by Nicaragua [see the text following this footnote in
U.P., and footnotes 43 and 44 of this chapter].
Brian Hoyle, director of the Office of Ocean Law and Policy at the State
Department, was openly contemptuous of Rubin's arguments. ... "I find it
inconceivable that Libya could invoke this right [of self-defense]." As to the World
Court, Hoyle said any case "would have taken years and years. I don't think we
could live with this."
21 . For the White House's immediate announcement of a Libyan connection to the
disco bombing, see for example, Gerald M. Boyd, "U.S. Sees Methods Of Libya In
Attack," New York Times, April 6, 1986, p. 1 ("Administration counterterrorism officials
said there was 'strong circumstantial evidence' linking Libya to the bombing," and "a
'consensus' within the Administration that the nightclub attack was part of a pattern of
activity directed against Americans and American installations in which Colonel Qaddafi
has been responsible"); Bernard Gwertzman, "Fear of Flying," New York Times, April 6,
1986, section 4, p. 1 (also reporting that "American officials said they suspected there
was Libyan involvement in the Berlin attack," without providing any specific evidence).
See also footnotes 28 and 30 of this chapter.
22. The A. P. story appeared on the ticker-tape on April 1 4, 1 986. It stated:
[T]he Allied military command [in West Berlin] reported no developments in the
investigation of the disco bombing. ... U.S. and West German officials have said
Libya - possibly through its embassy in Communist-ruled East Berlin ~ is suspected
of involvement in the bombing of the La Belle night-club.
23. For Speakes's assertion, see for example, Gerald M. Boyd, "Genesis of a
Decision: How the President Approved Retaliatory Strikes," New York Times, April 15,
1986, p. A1 1 (Speakes told reporters that the President decided to bomb Libya "[w]hen
we were able to, in the last several days ... tie Qaddafi in very directly to the Berlin disco
bombing which resulted in the death of an American citizen").
24. In contrast to the enthusiastic reaction of the U.S. press, the bombing aroused
extensive protest throughout Europe, including large demonstrations, and evoked
editorial condemnation in most of the world. Chomsky summarizes {Pirates and
Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World, Boston: South End, 1 991 , pp. 131-
132):
Spain's major newspaper, the independent El Pais, condemned the raid, stating:
"The military action of the United States is not only an offense against international
law and a grave threat to peace in the Mediterranean, but a mockery of its European
allies, who did not find motives for economic sanctions against Libya in a meeting
Monday, despite being previously and unsuccessfully pressured to adopt sanctions."
The conservative South China Morning Post in Hong Kong wrote that "President
Reagan's cure for the 'mad dog of the Middle East' may prove more lethal than the
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 17
disease," and his action "may also have lit the fuse to a wider conflagration in the
Middle East." In Mexico City, El Universal wrote that the U.S. "has no right to set
itself up as the defender of world freedom," urging recourse to legal means through
the United Nations.
25. For the German magazine, see DerSpeigel (Germany), April 21 , 1986. The
edition of the issue sold in the United States had a picture of Qaddafi on the cover, not
Reagan.
26. For the West German investigator's statement, see Andrew Cockburn, "Sixty
Seconds Over Tripoli," Playboy, May 1 987, pp. 1 30f (Manfred Ganschow's exact words:
"I have no more evidence that Libya was connected to the bombing than I had when you
first called me two days after the act. Which is none").
On Helmut Kohl's alleged statement of support, see James M. Markham, "Libya
Raids: Behind Allies' Reactions," New York Times, April 25, 1986, p. A6. An excerpt:
A senior adviser to the Chancellor [of West Germany] said Mr. Kohl was "furious"
when he read that Reagan administration officials had described him as willing to
condone military action against Libya in private while publicly opposing such a step.
"He said nothing like this," the adviser insisted. . . . [Italian Prime Minister Bettino]
Craxi's aides, too, were shocked to hear him described by Washington officials as
having privately endorsed the American raid.
27. For later stories about other suspects in the disco bombing, see for example,
Robert J. McCartney, "Clues Hint Syrian Link In '86 Berlin Bombing," Washington Post,
January 11,1 988, p. A1 3. An excerpt:
New clues have surfaced suggesting that the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin
discotheque may have been ordered by a convicted Arab terrorist who has been
linked by a court to Syrian officials in another bombing case, a West Berlin court
spokesman said today. . . .
[A] U.S. official familiar with the case acknowledged that the revelations "may
raise some questions about who was sponsoring what." The U.S. government has
not altered its judgment that Libya was "involved" in the La Belle bombing, said the
official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified. "We're still sticking to our
original notion that the Libyans were involved in this thing, regardless of who else this
woman may be tied in with," the U.S. official said. "It's not unusual for people
involved in terrorism to have contacts with different countries," he said. President
Reagan, in announcing the bombing raid on Libya, said the United States had
"conclusive" evidence that the bombing was on "direct order by the Libyan regime."
James M. Markham, "Suspect Reportedly Asserts Syria Directed Bombing At A Berlin
Club," New York Times, May 7, 1986, p. A1 (suggesting "possible Syrian involvement in
the attack"); Roberto Suro, "New Data Linked to Terror Plots," New York Times, July 3,
1986, p. B1 1 (reporting the arrest of a Jordanian student in connection with the
bombing). See also footnote 29 of this chapter.
28. The B.B.C.'s investigation, "Twelve Minutes Over Tripoli," aired on B.B.C.-1
T.V. on April 3, 1 987. For a summary of some of its findings, see Bill Schaap, "The
Endless Campaign: Disinforming the World on Libya," Covert Action Information
Bulletin, No. 30, Summer 1988, pp. 70-71 . An excerpt:
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 18
Not only was there no evidence of Libyan involvement, there was considerable
evidence to the contrary. Every Western European government except Mrs.
Thatcher's -- which would support President Reagan if he said the sun rose in the
west -- expressed skepticism, as did the West Berlin police authorities in charge of
the investigation.
In fact, U.S. Ambassador Burt, Secretary of State Shultz, and Secretary of
Defense Weinberger all lied to bolster the story that the U.S. had clear proof of Libyan
involvement. They said that the U.S. evidence -- intercepts of coded messages
between Libyan People's Bureaus -- was so compelling that prior to the bombing U.S.
military police in West Berlin had been put on the alert and had been clearing bars of
customers that evening. Weinberger went so far as to say that the M.P.s were just
fifteen minutes late to save the people at the LaBelle discotheque. In fact, this was a
complete fabrication. As the Deputy Chief of West Berlin's military police told Bower,
there was no alert, no one was going around clearing bars, and it would not have
made any sense in the first place, since the intercepts made no mention of specific
targets.
29. Fifteen years after the Berlin disco bombing, a German judge convicted four
people, including a Libyan embassy worker and diplomat, of the crime and imposed 1 2
to 1 4 year sentences. The judge concluded that Qaddafi's personal responsibility was
not proven, but that "Libya bears at least a very considerable part of the responsibility for
the attack." The judge also criticized the U.S. and German governments for continuing
unwillingness to disclose their "intelligence" about the incident. See for example,
Steven Erlanger, "4 Guilty in Fatal 1986 Berlin Disco Bombing Linked to Libya," New
York Times, November 14, 2001 , p. A7.
Chomsky remarks about the relationship of this verdict to his comments in the
text regarding the lack of proffered evidence of a Libyan connection at the time, and the
media's treatment of the U.S. bombings: "As a matter of logic, the only relevant question
is what was known at the time -- what might be discovered years later has nothing to do
with the justification for the bombing of Libya or the disgraceful way the media handled
the information that was known to them. Suppose, for example, that it is discovered
twenty years from now that on Sept. 1 2, 2001 , the U.S. was planning to drop nuclear
weapons on Iraq, and the Sept. 1 1th attack aborted that effort. Would that vindicate bin
Laden?"
Notably, the Reagan administration's assertion at the time it was bombing Tripoli
and Benghazi that Qaddafi was "very directly" implicated in the disco bombing -- which
is quoted in footnote 23 of this chapter -- was deemed insufficiently proven by the
German judge. See for example, "No proof Gadhafi tied to blast: Four convicted in '86
Bombing of Berlin Disco," Seattle Times, November 14, 2001 , p.A17.
30. For the story of the bombing alert, see for example, Bob Woodward,
"Intelligence 'Coup' Tied Libya to Blast," Washington Post, April 22, 1 986, p. A1 . An
excerpt:
As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander, Gen. Bernard W. Rogers,
said in a speech in Atlanta on April 9, the [intercepted] intelligence provided
"indisputable evidence" of Libyan responsibility and the United States was almost
able to warn G.l.s to vacate the La Belle disco minutes before the explosion. "We
were about 15 minutes too late," Rogers said.
See also footnote 28 of this chapter.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 19
31 . For Markham's selectively quoting the West German investigator, see for
example, James M. Markham, "West Germans Question Suspect In Disco Bombing,"
New York Times, April 23, 1 986, p. A6 (the only reference to Ganschow: "In a telephone
interview, Manfred Ganschow, the head of a special commission investigating the
discotheque explosion, confirmed that patrons who had been in the club on April 5 had
been shown [a Jordanian not suspected of being the main perpetrator] in a police lineup
with other Arabs. Mr. Ganschow declined to say what the results of the lineup had
been"); James M. Markham, "Suspect Reportedly Asserts Syria Directed Bombing At A
Berlin Club," New York Times, May 7, 1986, p. A1 (quoting Ganschow, but not his
skepticism about the Reagan administration's claims or his statements about the lack of
any evidence of Libyan involvement in the bombing); James M. Markham, "On the Trail
of Arab Terror: Footprints In Berlin," New York Times, May 31 , 1986, p. 2 (same).
32. For the account of the British engineers, see David Blundy, "Britons worked on
Gaddafi's missiles," Sunday Times (London), April 6, 1986, p. 12. An excerpt:
[One of the engineers] said that he was watching the radar screens during the
two days of fighting. He saw American warplanes cross not only into the 1 2 miles of
Libyan territorial waters, but over Libyan land as well. "I watched the planes fly
approximately eight miles into Libyan air space," he said. "I don't think the Libyans
had any choice but to hit back. In my opinion they were reluctant to do so."
The engineer said the American warplanes made their approach using a normal
civil airline traffic route and followed in the wake of a Libyan airliner, so that its radar
blip would mask them on the Libyan radar screen.
See also, David Blundy with Andrew Lycett, Quaddafi and the Libyan Revolution,
Boston: Little, Brown, 1987, pp. 7-8.
33. For Reagan's speech, see footnote 1 9 of this chapter.
34. For Andrew Cockburn's study of the Libya bombing, see Andrew Cockburn,
"Sixty Seconds Over Tripoli," Playboy, May 1987, pp. 130f.
35. On the Grenada Medals of Honor, see for example, "Overdecorated," Time,
April 9, 1984, p. 27. An excerpt:
For last year's invasion of Grenada, by any measure a quick and efficient operation,
the U.S. Army last week disclosed it had awarded 8,612 medals. What made the
back-patting noteworthy was that no more than about 7,000 officers and enlisted men
ever set foot on the tiny Caribbean island.
"Medals Outnumber G.l.'s In Grenada Assault," New York Times, March 30, 1 984, p. A1 ;
Brad Knickerbocker, "Study criticizes invasion tactics in Grenada," Christian Science
Monitor, April 6, 1 984, p. 1 (the awards "included achievement medals to about 50
people based at the Pentagon").
36. On the official report about the Grenada invasion, see for example,
Rick Atkinson, "Study Faults U.S. Military Tactics in Grenada Invasion," Washington
Post, April 6, 1 984, p. A3. An excerpt:
The invasion of Grenada last October was not the classic operation the Pentagon
has implied but a poorly planned venture that raises "disturbing" questions about U.S.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes ~ 20
military tactics and performance, a study released yesterday . . . concludes. An
initial invasion plan developed by the Navy's Atlantic Fleet headquarters was
"overruled by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who demanded that all four services be
involved -- just as in the Iran rescue mission" in 1980, according to the analysis
prepared by William S. Lind. . . . [T]he resulting "pie-dividing contest" allowed the
relatively small number of Cuban defenders on the island "to form and maintain a
fairly effective defense. . . ."
[The study found that] the elite military units in the invasion, including Navy SEAL
commandos and a Delta Force anti-terrorist squad, "failed in much of what they
attempted." For example, the SEALs failed to knock Radio Grenada off the air
because they "attacked the wrong building" after finding the station compound.
Several SEALs drowned because of "poor weather forecasting. . . ." Of
"approximately 100 U.S. helicopters used on Grenada, nine were destroyed and a
number of others were damaged" although the Cubans lacked antiaircraft missiles.
See also, Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,
New York: Schocken Books, 1 989, ch. 1 (discussing media coverage of the Grenada
invasion); James Ferguson, Grenada: Revolution in Reverse, London: Latin America
Bureau, 1990; Hugh O'Shaughnessy, Grenada: An Eyewitness Account of the U.S.
Invasion and the Caribbean History That Provoked It, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1 984.
37. On the performance of much of the most expensive weaponry, see for example,
Tim Weiner, "The $2 Billion Stealth Bomber Can't Go Out in the Rain," New York Times,
August 23, 1997, p. A5. An excerpt:
Two years ago, the problem with the Air Force's B-2 Stealth bombers, which cost
$2 billion apiece, was that their radar could not tell a rain cloud from a mountainside.
Now the problem is that the B-2 cannot go out in the rain. The investigative arm of
Congress reported this week that the B-2, the world's most expensive aircraft,
deteriorates in rain, heat and humidity. It "must be sheltered or exposed only to the
most benign environments - low humidity, no precipitation, moderate temperatures. .
The Air Force issued a statement today saying that, for now, it will cancel plans to
station the bombers overseas. . . . The Northrop Grumman Corporation is building 21
of the planes at a cost of $44.7 billion. . . . The report by the General Accounting
Office said . . . [i]t is unlikely that the problem "will ever be fully resolved. . . ." [T]he
B-2 bombers were able to perform their missions only 26 percent of the time.
Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein, Washington Babylon, London: Verso, 1996.
An excerpt (pp. 176-178):
The $500 million Aegis high-tech radar system . . . was designed to track and
shoot down up to 200 incoming missiles at once. The Navy "tested" the Aegis in a
meadow near Exit 4 of the New Jersey Turnpike, where it was charged with the
difficult task of monitoring civilian air traffic over New York-area airports. In another
set of tests, the Aegis performed brilliantly, shooting down 10 of 1 1 drones. It turned
out that the system's operators were informed in advance of the path and speed of
incoming targets. In 1988, its first time in combat after being installed on the U.S.S.
Vincennes, the Aegis successfully bagged an Iranian Airbus with 290 civilians on
board. Human and mechanical error led the crew to mistake the Airbus (length: 175
feet) for an F-14 (length: 62 feet), miscalculate its altitude by 4,000 feet and report
that the civilian aircraft was descending in attack position when the plane was
actually climbing. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 21
The Maverick air-to-surface missile, used with less than 50 percent accuracy
during the Gulf War, has heat-seeking infrared sensors which "lock on" target.
Unfortunately, the sensors are easily distracted. In one test during which the
Maverick was supposed to be homing in on a tank, operators discovered that the
missile had locked on a distant campfire where two soldiers were cooking beans.
One of the most outrageous pieces of pork in the Pentagon's budget is the C-17
transport plane, staunchly backed by the Clintonites. . . . The plane's purpose is to
rush men and materials to distant wars. The Pentagon initially planned to buy 210 C-
17s for $32 billion ($152 million apiece), but in 1990 cut the order to 120 planes for
$36 billion ($333 million apiece). In late 1993, the Pentagon announced a further
reduction of the program to 40 planes. No cost was given but the price tag is likely to
hit $28 billion, or $700 million apiece. The original justification for the aircraft ~
confronting the Red Menace - has vanished. But the Pentagon still insists that the
C-17 is a "must buy." A 1993 Congressional Research Service report detailed a few
of the problems surrounding this wondrous boondoggle.
Officials described the C-17's wings as having "buckled" during an October 1992
"stress" test. A congressional staffer familiar with the program says "the wings didn't
buckle, they were destroyed. They ripped like pieces of paper." After McDonnell
Douglas spent approximately $100 million on a major redesign ~ an expense most
likely passed on to the Pentagon - a second test was conducted in July of 1993,
only to be quickly halted when the wings began to splinter. In a third test conducted
two months later, the C-17's left wing cracked in two places. Heartened because the
right wing was undamaged, the Pentagon declared this test a rousing success and
said no further experiments would be required. The C-17 also has a mysterious
center-of-gravity problem, which makes take-off extremely dangerous unless the
plane is fully loaded. When the aircraft is empty, Air Force crews keep two 7,950
pound cement blocks - known as the "pet rocks" - in the craft's forward area to
ensure safe take-off. This means that the C-17 will either fly into action pre-loaded
with nearly eight tons of cement or advance troops will be forced to tote along two
"pet rocks" to load onto the plane after removing its cargo. Alas, the C-17 is
incapable of carrying out its assigned task of forward resupply. The enormous
aircraft needs at least 4,000 feet of runway to land, 1 ,000 more than the Air Force
claims. The C-17 cannot come down on a dirt airstrip because its jet engines will
"ingest" earth. A used Boeing 747 - which can be bought and modified for less than
$1 00 million - can carry three times as much cargo twice as far as the C-1 7.
See also, Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman, Take The Rich Off Welfare, Tucson:
Odonian, 1 996, pp. 1 3-35. And see footnote 45 of chapter 5 of U.P.
38. For Reagan's comment, see for example, Francis X. Clines, "Military of U.S.
'Standing Tall,' Reagan Asserts," New York Times, December 13, 1983, p. A1.
For more on the masterful way that the Reagan administration used photo-
opportunity sessions to manipulate the press, see Thomas Whiteside, "Standups," New
Yorker, December 2, 1985, pp. 81 f; Alexander Cockburn, "Viewpoint: Is Press
Awakening to Reagan's Deceptions?," Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1986, p. 33;
Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, New York:
Schocken, 1988.
39. On the U.S. lead in U.N. Security Council vetoes since the 1 970s, see for
example, Anjali V. Patil, The U.N. Veto in World Affairs, 1946-1990: A Complete Record
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 22
and Case Histories of the Security Council's Veto, Sarasota, FL: Unifo, 1 992, pp. 471 -
486. From 1 946 to 1 972, the U.S.S.R. used 1 1 6 vetoes, Britain 1 1 , China 5, France 4,
and the U.S. 2. From 1 973 to 1 990, the U.S. used 80 vetoes, Britain 22, China 1 7,
France 14, and the U.S.S.R./Russia 8.
See also, Robert C. Johansen, "The Reagan Administration and the U.N.: The
Costs of Unilateralism," World Policy Journal, Fall 1986, pp. 601-641 at p. 605 (from
1 980 to 1 986, the U.S. used 27 Security Council vetoes and the Soviet Union 4; from
1 966 to 1 980, the U.S. used 22 vetoes and the Soviet Union 1 0); Noam Chomsky, "The
Rule of Force in International Affairs," Yale Law Journal, Vol. 80, No. 7, June 1971 , pp.
1456-1491 (revised and reprinted as ch. 3 of Chomsky's For Reasons of State, New
York: Pantheon, 1973); Noam Chomsky, "The United States and the challenge of
relativity," in Tony Evans, ed., Human rights fifty years on: A reappraisal, Manchester,
U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1 998, pp. 24-56. And see footnotes 43, 44 and 46 of
this chapter; and chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 48.
40. For "diaperology," see for example, Margaret Mead, "What Makes The Soviet
Character?," Natural History, September 1951, pp. 296f. An excerpt:
The Russian baby was swaddled, as were most of the infants of Eastern peoples
and as Western European infants used to be, but they were swaddled tighter and
longer than were, for example, their neighbors, the Poles. . . . This early period
seems to have left a stronger impression on Russian character than the same period
of learning does for members of many other societies in which the parents are more
preoccupied with teaching skills appropriate to later stages of development. ... So
we find in traditional Russian character elaborated forms of these very early
learnings. There is a tendency to confuse thought and action, a capacity for
impersonal anger as at the constriction of the swaddling bands. . . . We may expect
everything we do to look different to them from the way it looks to us. . . . In
communicating with people who think as differently as this, successful plans either
for limited co-operation in the attainment of partial world goals or for active opposition
depend upon our getting an accurate estimate of what the Soviet people of today are
like. We must know just what the differences in their thinking and feeling are.
41 . On U.S. vetoes at the U.N. from the 1 970s, see footnote 39 of this chapter.
42. For the article on the U.N., see Richard Bernstein, "The U.N. Versus the U.S.,"
New York Times Magazine, January 22, 1 984, p. 1 8. An excerpt:
The question is not why American policy has diverged from that of other member
states, but why the world's most powerful democracy has failed to win support for its
views among the participants in United Nations debates. The answer seems to lie in
two underlying factors. The first and dominant one is the very structure and political
culture that have evolved at the world body, tending in the process to isolate the
United States and to portray it as a kind of ideological villain. The other fact is
American failure to play the game of multilateral diplomacy with sufficient skill.
43. On Congress's response immediately after the World Court's decision, see for
example, Linda Greenhouse, "Trump Cards; Reagan And The Contras Win A Round In
The House," New York Times, June 29, 1 986, section 4, p. 1 .
For the World Court's decision, see International Court of Justice, Reports of
Judgments, Advisory Opinions and Orders: 1986, "Case Concerning Military and
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 23
Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua" (Nicaragua v. United States of
America), Judgment of June 27, 1986. The Court's conclusions are in paragraph 292,
with the references to illegal economic warfare in subparagraphs 1 and 1 1 . An excerpt
(paragraphs 251 , 252, 1 58-1 60):
[T]he assistance to the contras, as well as the direct attacks on Nicaraguan ports, oil
installations, etc . . . not only amount to an unlawful use of force, but also constitute
infringements of the territorial sovereignty of Nicaragua, and incursions into its
territorial and internal waters. . . . These violations cannot be justified either by
collective self-defence [the U.S. claim] ... nor by any right of the United States to
take counter-measures involving the use of force in the event of intervention by
Nicaragua in El Salvador, since no such right exists under the applicable international
law. They cannot be justified by the activities in El Salvador attributed to the
Government of Nicaragua [i.e. an alleged arms flow to the Salvadoran guerrillas] . . .
[of which] the evidence is insufficient to satisfy the Court.
44. For U.S. commentary on the World Court's decision, see for example, Thomas
Franck [New York University international law specialist], "A Way to Rejoin the World
Court," New York Times, July 1 7, 1 986, p. A23 (agreeing that the United States should
not accept the Court's jurisdiction in such matters, because we must maintain "the
freedom to protect freedom"; apparently in denial that a Central America solidarity
movement existed in the U.S., Professor Franck's article begins by asserting: "no
American will rejoice that the United States has just lost a major lawsuit brought against
it by Nicaragua"); Jonathan Karp, "Administration Dismisses Ruling: State Dept. Says
World Court Is 'Not Equipped' For Complex Cases," Washington Post, June 28, 1986, p.
A1 4; Editorial, "America's Guilt -- or Default," New York Times, July 1 , 1 986, p. A22
(calling the World Court "a hostile forum," the editors falsely claim that "even the majority
[of the World Court] acknowledged that prior attacks against El Salvador from Nicaragua
made 'collective defense' a possible justification for America's retaliation"). Two weeks
later, the Times published the Nicaraguan Ambassador's letter responding to this
editorial (Carlos Tunnermann Bernheim, "World Court's Definitive Ruling Against the
U.S.," Letter, New York Times, July 1 7, 1 986, p. A22):
You say "the majority acknowledged that prior attacks against El Salvador from
Nicaragua made 'collective defense' a possible justification for America's retaliation."
This is untrue. The Court's 142-page opinion, supported by 12 of the 15 judges,
totally rejects "collective defense" as a justification for U.S. actions against
Nicaragua. The Court found that there were no attacks by Nicaragua against El
Salvador. With respect to U.S. allegations that Nicaragua sends arms to Salvadoran
rebels, the Court found that "the evidence is insufficient to satisfy the Court that the
Government of Nicaragua was responsible for any flow of arms." Thus, the Court
determined that the factual underpinning of the "collective defense" argument was
nonexistent. Moreover, it ruled that even if Nicaragua had supplied some arms to the
rebels, under international law this would not constitute an "attack" against El
Salvador and would not justify U.S. support of the contras or any other form of
"collective defense. . . ."
[T]he Court's "hostility" is not directed at the U.S. but at actions by any state that
flagrantly violates the most fundamental principles of international law ~ such as U.S.
support for the contras.
See also, Abraham Sofaer [State Department Legal Adviser], "The United States
and the World Court," Statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 24
December 4, 1 985, Current Policy, U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Public Affairs,
No. 769, December 1985 (explaining that when the U.S. originally accepted the
jurisdiction of a World Court, most members of the U.N. "were aligned with the United
States and shared its views regarding world order" -- but now, "A great many of these
[countries] cannot be counted on to share our view of the original constitutional
conception of the U.N. Charter, particularly with regard to the special position of the
Permanent Members of the Security Council in the maintenance of international peace
and security. This same majority often opposes the United States on important
international questions." Therefore, the author advises that we "reserve to ourselves the
power to determine whether the Court has jurisdiction over us in a particular case").
45. On the unreported U.N. resolutions concerning the World Court decision, see
for example, Andrew Katell, "U.N. Adopts Resolution Calling For End To U.S. Aid To
Contras," November 1 2, 1 987 (Westlaw database # 1 987 WL 31 90359). An excerpt
from this article, which was on the news-wire but not reported by the U.S. press:
For the second year in a row, the General Assembly on Thursday approved a
resolution calling on the United States to stop helping the Nicaraguan rebels. . . . The
159-member world body passed a similar resolution Nov. 3, 1986. The measure was
adopted 94-2, with 48 abstentions. . . . Last year's tally was 94-3 in favor, with 47
abstentions.
The 1 986 General Assembly vote received no mention in the New York Times --
the same day, its U.N. correspondent preferred to report on overly high salaries at the
U.N. The 1986 Security Council veto merited only a brief note. See Stephen Engelberg,
"Justice Department Opens Contra Study," New York Times, October 29, 1 986, p. A3
("The United States tonight vetoed a Security Council resolution that called for
compliance with a World Court ruling banning United States aid to rebels fighting
Nicaragua's Government"). The 1 987 General Assembly vote was not reported by the
New York Times, the Washington Post, or the three national television networks. See
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, "Cold War Bias at the U.N. Beat," Extra!, December
1 987, p. 1 (analyzing the media treatment). The August 1 988 World Court
announcement that the United States had failed to meet the court's deadline for
determining war reparations to Nicaragua also passed virtually without notice. See A.P.,
"World Court Declares U.S. Misses Deadline," Washington Post, August 4, 1988, p. A24
(five-sentence item on the World Court's announcement).
46. On the United States's unpaid U.N. dues, see for example, John M. Goshko,
"U.N. Reform Pits U.S. and Third World," Washington Post, March 10, 1997, p. A1. An
excerpt:
A majority of Congress believes the United Nations spends too much of
American taxpayers' money on programs that don't work or are not in the U.S.
interest. The lawmakers have told new Secretary General Kofi Annan that he must
carry out drastic cost-cutting, perhaps by eliminating as much as one-fourth of his
staff, or they will not approve paying the dues the United States owes that the United
Nations needs to save it from bankruptcy. . . .
Annan was told that a lot of back-seat driving by Congress would be the price if
Congress is to approve paying the back dues and assessments that the United
States has owed to the United Nations for years. U.N. officials estimate the amount
at $1.3 billion, but Congress says that by its reckoning the figure is closer to $800
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 25
million. . . . Annan . . . reaffirmed his view that the United States is obligated by treaty
to continue paying its U.N. obligations at existing rates. In this, Annan has the
support of all other U.N. members, including Western European nations that
Washington normally counts as allies.
See also, Paul Lewis, "Soviet, In Switch, Says It Is Paying U.N. All It Owes," New York
Times, October 1 6, 1 987, p. A1 . An excerpt:
The Soviet Union announced today that it was paying all its outstanding debts to
the financially troubled United Nations, including $197 million for peacekeeping
operations it has long refused to support. . . . The United States remains the United
Nations' largest single debtor. . . . Herbert S. Okun, the American deputy permanent
representative at the United Nations, called the [Soviets'] decision "long overdue. . . ."
The United States has . . . refused to pay all the dues assessed by the United
Nations in recent years. . . . The United States even backed a request to the World
Court at The Hague for a ruling on whether the Soviet Union should pay its share.
The Court ruled that all members must pay, but Moscow still refused to do so. . . .
[T]he failure of the United States to pay its assessed share of the United Nations
budget ... is the main cause of the organization's serious financial difficulties.
Unreported is the fact that according to the U.S. mission at the United Nations, the U.N.
operation "funnels $400 million to $700 million per year into the U.S. and New York
economies." See A. P., February 28, 1 988 (unpublished news-wire report).
47. On the propaganda campaign against U.N.E.S.C.O., see for example, William
Preston, Edward S. Herman, and Herbert I. Schiller, Hope and Folly: The United States
and U.N.E.S.C.O., 1945-1985, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
48. For selective reporting of the U.N. condemnations, see Paul Lewis, "General
Assembly Handed Setbacks to U.S. and Soviet: Washington Lost on Budget, Moscow
on Afghanistan in Session Just Ended," New York Times, December 26, 1987, section
1 , p. 1 (reviewing the General Assembly session and reporting the vote denouncing the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but mentioning nothing about the 94-to-2 vote on the
World Court's decision condemning the U.S. contra war in Nicaragua -- in which the
majority even included such U.S. allies as Australia, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Spain, as well as major Latin American
countries including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay,
Venezuela, along with Sweden, Finland, and others); Paul Lewis, "U.N. Urges Soviet to
Pull Forces From Afghanistan," New York Times, November 11,1 987, p. A1 2 ("The
General Assembly voted overwhelmingly today for the immediate withdrawal of Soviet
forces from Afghanistan, brushing aside Moscow's first concerted attempt to deflect such
criticism by the United Nations"). On the following day's unreported General Assembly
vote calling upon the United States to comply with international law, see footnote 45 of
this chapter.
49. For a news-wire article on the General Assembly disarmament resolutions, see
A.P., "General Assembly Opposes Star Wars, Calls For End To Nuclear Testing,"
November 30, 1 987 (Westlaw database # 1 987 WL 31 93928). An excerpt:
The General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Monday to oppose an arms race in
outer space and the United States cast the single dissenting ballot. . . . The vote was
1 54 to 1 , with no abstentions. It was one of a series of more than 25 votes on arms
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 26
issues. In 14 cases, the United States opposed the resolutions, while the Soviet
Union endorsed them. . . .
The United States was in a minority on other votes. It cast the single "no" vote on
a resolution against developing new kinds of weapons of mass destruction. The vote
was 135 to 1, with 18 abstentions. The assembly overwhelmingly called for a
comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty by a vote of 143 to 2 with eight abstentions.
The United States was joined by France, another nuclear power. The world body
also urged a halt to all nuclear test explosions, by a vote of 137 to 3, with 14
abstentions. France and Britain, which has nuclear weapons, joined the American
side. The General Assembly also voted for a freeze on nuclear weapons and for a
prohibition on development and use of radiological weapons.
Note that this story was on the news-wire, but apparently was reported by only one major
newspaper in the United States -- see A. P. "U.N. Condemns Space Arms Race," San
Francisco Chronicle, December 1 , 1 987, p. A21 .
These U.N. votes are discussed in Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought
Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, pp. 83f; and Noam Chomsky,
Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1991 (expanded edition 1992), pp. 96-
97.
50. For the New York Times's 1 987 summary article on the U.N., see Paul Lewis,
"General Assembly Handed Setbacks to U.S. and Soviet: Washington Lost on Budget,
Moscow on Afghanistan in Session Just Ended," New York Times, December 26, 1987,
section 1 , p. 1 (note that this article is described in footnote 48 of this chapter).
51 . On early opposition to public education in the United States, see chapter 7 of
U.P. and its footnote 31 .
52. On the devastation inflicted during the Indochina wars, see for example, Paul
Quinn-Judge, "The confusion and mystery surrounding Vietnam's war dead," Far
Eastern Economic Review, October 11,1 984, pp. 48-49 (reporting that from 1 965,
deaths in Vietnam alone -- not in all of Indochina, as Chomsky is discussing in the text --
may have exceeded three million people); Jean Lacouture and Simonne Lacouture,
Vietnam: voyage a travers une victoire, Paris: Seuil, 1 976 (graphic eyewitness
description of the extent and character of the damage to property and persons
throughout Vietnam, estimating that in South Vietnam alone 8 million people were
displaced from their homes by the war); John Pilger, "Vietnam: Do not weep for those
just born; John Pilger revisits the country whose war he reported for ten years," New
Statesman (U.K.), September 15, 1978, pp. 324f. An excerpt:
Much of North Vietnam is a moonscape from which visible signs of life ~ houses,
factories, schools, hospitals, pagodas, churches - have been obliterated. In some
forests there are no longer birds and animals; and there are lorry drivers who will not
respond to the hooting of a horn because they are deaf from the incessant sound of
bombs; according to the Vice Minister of health, more than 30,000 children in Hanoi
and Haiphong suffered permanent deafness during the twelve nights of bombing at
Christmas 1 972.
In Hanoi's Bach Mai Hospital, doctors have discovered that Napalm "B," an
amalgam of benzine, polystyrene and gasoline, which the Dow Chemical Company
created especially for Vietnam, continues to smolder under the skin's tissues through
the lifetime of its victims. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 27
A place called Ham Long ought to be as famous as Dresden [site of the climax of
Allied aerial bombing of Germany in World War II], because it was bombed more than
Dresden: every day for four years, from five in the morning till two in the afternoon. . .
. [I]n Vinh, a large mining community, the layer upon layer of bombing penetrated
underground and today not even the foundations of buildings remain. . . . People
here, living under straw, are today on the edge of famine; a Cuban agronomist I met
told me that . . . people in devastated areas, such as Vinh, were being rationed to just
six pounds of rice per month. "That is considerably less than Bangladesh," he
reminded me.
John Pilger, "From Vietnam to El Salvador," New Statesman (U.K.), May 22, 1981, pp.
6f. An excerpt (p. 18):
In Cu Chi, near Saigon, which I remember as thick forest, there is today a
shimmering horizon of wilderness which has been poisoned, perhaps for generations.
Eleven million gallons of the herbicide Agent Orange were clumped on Vietnam; its
chief ingredient, dioxin, is estimated to be a thousand times more destructive than
thalidomide. Blind and deformed babies are now common in those areas sprayed
during Operation Hades, later re-named Operation Ranch Hand.
Amnon Kapeliouk, "Thousands of Vietnamese still die from the effects of American
chemical warfare," Yediot Ahronot (Israel), April 7, 1988 (describing the "terrifying"
scene in hospitals in South Vietnam of children dying of cancer and hideous birth
deformities caused by U.S. chemical warfare, and the "hair-raising stories that remind
me of what we heard during the trials of Eichmann and Demjanjuk," told to the author on
his visit to post-war Vietnam by victims who, remarkably, "express no hatred against the
American people")(quotations are Chomsky's own translation); Arthur Westing, "Crop
destruction as a means of war," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 1 981 , pp. 38-
42 (on the devastating impact of U.S. crop-destruction programs from 1961 , including
aerial destruction using chemicals; ground operations to destroy orchards and dikes;
and land-clearing by giant tractors called "Rome plows," which "obliterated" agricultural
lands and entire rural residential areas and farming hamlets, often including extensive
systems of paddy dikes, leaving the soil "bare, gray and lifeless"; the author likens the
result of these operations to the "less efficient" destruction of Carthage by the ancient
Romans in the Punic Wars); J.B. Neiland et al., Harvest of Death: Chemical Warfare In
Vietnam and Cambodia, New York: Free Press, 1 972 (study by four science professors
and a doctor of the effects and the use by the United States of gas warfare and
herbicides in Vietnam and Cambodia); Charles Mohr, "Studies Show Vietnam Raids
Failed," New York Times, May 28, 1984, p. A6. Although the overwhelming majority of
the casualties in the Vietnam War were in the South, this article reports C.I.A. casualty
estimates only for North Vietnam (note the article's title):
C.I.A. reports, now declassified . . . essentially confirmed the North Vietnamese
figures [estimating civilian and non-civilian casualties]. [A 1967 C.I.A. report] said the
monthly air casualty rate in the North - "heavily weighted with civilians" - had gone
from 2,200 a month in 1966 to 2,800 a month in early 1967 [i.e. well more than 33,000
by 1967].
Edward S. Herman, Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, Boston: Pilgrim, 1970,
pp. 44-45, 86 (careful early analysis of casualty figures, estimating that in South Vietnam
alone civilian casualties by 1 970 were more than 1 million dead and more than 2 million
wounded, and noting that by 1 968 the total number of refugees "generated" mainly by
the American scorched-earth policy was estimated by the Kennedy Committee of the
90th Congress at almost 4 million people; the horrors described throughout this study
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 28
are nearly unbearable). See also chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 79; footnotes 61 and
62 of this chapter; and chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnote 57.
Chomsky remarks (After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction
of Imperial Ideology -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume II, Boston: South
End, 1979, p. 83):
On the rare occasions when the devastating consequences of the [Vietnam] war
are noted [in the West], care is taken to sanitize the reports so as to eliminate the
U.S. role. The New York Times, for example, carried an A. P. report from Manila on a
World Health Organization study, describing South Vietnam as "a land of widespread
malaria, bubonic plague, leprosy, tuberculosis, venereal disease and 300,000
prostitutes . . . one of the few places on earth where leprosy was spreading and
bubonic plague was still taking lives." The W.H.O. report states that "if the bomb-
shattered fields are to be made fertile again, and the socio-economic conditions of the
people improved, freedom from malaria will have to be first insured," while in the
North the main health problem is to reconstruct the 533 community health centers, 94
district hospitals, 28 provincial hospitals and 24 research institutes and specialized
hospitals that "were destroyed during the war" ~ by some unknown hand.
The sole mention of the United States in this grisly report is the statement that the
United States has been invited to a meeting "to consider helping the two countries" ~
the "two countries" being North and South Vietnam; while the 77'mes recognized the
integration of East Timor into Indonesia in 1976 [on East Timor, see chapter 8 of
U.P], it had not yet recognized the unification of the "two countries" of Vietnam [see
A.P., "South Vietnam, After 30 Years of War, Is Land of Widespread Disease, U.N.
Group Says," New York Times, March 21 , 1 976, p. A1 3].
53. For Chomsky's view in 1 970 of the prospects for Vietnam, see Noam Chomsky,
At War With Asia: Essays on Indochina, New York: Pantheon, 1 970. Chomsky warned
(p. 286):
I left Southeast Asia, after this brief stay, with two overriding general impressions.
The first was of the resilience and strength of Vietnamese society. It is conceivable
that the United States may be able to break the will of the popular movements in the
surrounding countries, perhaps even destroy the National Liberation Front of South
Vietnam, by employing the vast resources of violence and terror at its command. If
so, it will create a situation in which, indeed, North Vietnam will necessarily dominate
Indochina, for no other viable society will remain.
54. For the phrase "bleeding Vietnam" as a description of U.S. post-Vietnam War
policies, see for example, Derek Davies, "Caught in history's vice" (Cover title: "Bleeding
Vietnam White"), Far Eastern Economic Review, December 25, 1981, p. 17 (article
criticizing the "bleed Vietnam" policy in that it is damaging U.S. and Asian interests and
"is immensely helpful to the Soviet Union").
55. On U.S. support for Pol Pot as a way to "bleed Vietnam," see for example, Ben
Kiernan, "Deferring Peace in Cambodia: Regional Rapprochement, Superpower
Obstruction," in George W. Breslauer, Harry Kreisler and Benjamin Ward, eds., Beyond
The Cold War: Conflict and Cooperation In the Third World, Berkeley: Institute of
International Studies, 1991, pp. 59-82. An excerpt (pp. 67-70):
[Through 1990, the] three major planks of American policy towards Cambodia
remained unchanged. The U.S. veto of aid, including U.N., World Bank, and
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 29
International Monetary Fund aid to Cambodia, U.S. support for a Khmer Rouge role,
and U.S. military support of the Khmer Rouge's allies ($17-32 million per annum), all
continued. . . . Despite obvious difficulty in justifying it, the West has maintained an
embargo on Cambodia (renewed by Washington in September 1990 for its twelfth
year), yet still supports Pol Pot's allies and opposes Pol Pot's Cambodian opponents,
and continues to offer the Pol Pot forces a veto over any proposed settlement. For
over a decade, official Western support for Deng Xiaoping's China has spilled over
into Western support for his protege Pol Pot. . . . Washington also pressured U.N.
agencies to supply the Khmer Rouge. . . . Congressional sources have also cited a
figure of $85 million for U.S. aid to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge since 1979. . . .
In the diplomatic arena, the United States led most of the Western world to line up
behind China in support of the Khmer Rouge. Both the Carter and Reagan
Administrations voted for Pol Pot's representative to occupy Cambodia's seat in the
United Nations. . . . [T]he Bush administration has threatened to punish Thailand for
its defection from the aggressive U.S. -Chinese position. . . ." Washington has sought
not a mere independent Cambodian government, but an anti-Vietnamese one.
According to the Far Eastern Economic Review of 7 September 1989, "Thai officials
believe that, despite its publicly expressed revulsion towards the Khmer Rouge, the
U.S. has been quietly aiding the Khmer Rouge war effort for several years." [See
Michael Field, Rodney Tasker and Murray Hiebert, "No end in sight: Failure of Paris
talks signals return to battlefield," Far Eastern Economic Review, September 7, 1989,
pp. 14-16.]
Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon
to Reagan, Boston: Brookings Institution, 1985. An excerpt (p. 751):
American-Chinese collaboration in 1 979 was also evident in the support given by the
United States (and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, A.S. E.A.N.) in the
U.N. General Assembly to the Chinese-supported Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot as
the legitimate representative of Kampuchea [i.e. Cambodia]. . . . [R]ather than abstain
(as many Western European countries did), the United States joined China in
supporting the Khmer Rouge.
John Pilger, "America's second war in Indochina . . . Only the allies are new," New
Statesman (U.K.), August 1 , 1 980, pp. 1 0f.
For some of Deng Xiaoping's statements, see for example, Nayan Chanda, Brother
Enemy: The War after the War; A History of Indochina Since the Fall of Saigon, New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1986, p. 379. In 1979, Deng explained his motive for China's
supporting Pol Pot to Japanese Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira (note that Vietnam had
invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and overthrown the Khmer Rouge regime, in
response to years of murderous attacks on its borders by Pol Pot's forces):
"It is wise to force the Vietnamese to stay in Kampuchea [i.e. Cambodia] because
that way they will suffer more and more and will not be able to extend their hand to
Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore."
Nayan Chanda, "Sihanouk stonewalled," Far Eastern Economic Review, November 1 ,
1984, pp. 30-32. An excerpt:
China's senior statesman Deng Xiaoping said ... "I do not understand why some
want to remove Pol Pot. It is true that he made some mistakes in the past but now he
is leading the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors."
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 30
56. On the "threat of a good example" as a motivation of U.S. foreign policy, see
chapter 5 of U.P. especially its footnote 32, and also its footnotes 7, 8, 29 and 1 08. See
also, chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 20; and chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnote 8.
57. On sadistic U.S. efforts to maximize the suffering in post-war Vietnam, see for
example, Daniel Southerland, "U.S. blocks private shipment of wheat to Vietnam,"
Christian Science Monitor, May 1 3, 1 981 , p. 3 (on the U.S. government's rejection of a
Mennonite application "to ship 250 tons of wheat flour from Kansas to Vietnam"); Nayan
Chanda, "New Delhi Wants to Offer Help," Far Eastern Economic Review, February 25,
1 977, p. 44 (on the U.S. trying to block a shipment of buffaloes from India to Vietnam);
James Srodes, "An enigma at the World Bank," Far Eastern Economic Review,
November 1 6, 1 979, p. 82 (reporting that the U.S. successfully pressured the World
Bank to "cave in" and withdraw its only development loan to Vietnam); Elizabeth Becker,
"Milk for Vietnam," New York Times, July 3, 1 981 , p. A1 9 (reporting that the European
Economic Community's decision to withhold food from U.N.I.C.E.F. for Vietnam was
made under strong U.S. pressure: '"We had no choice on that one,' an E.E.C. source
explained"); Louis Wiznitzer, "The news -- briefly: U.S. blocks Viet project meant to step
up food," Christian Science Monitor, November 6, 1 981 , p. 2. An excerpt:
The United States is now using food as an instrument of its foreign policy. ... It has
succeeded in blocking a $5 million project (already reduced from the originally
intended $25 million) by the World Food Program aimed at building dams in Vietnam
that would improve the food situation there, which is reportedly dire.
Ted Morello, "Reagan's aid weapon: The axe hangs over U.N. agencies as Washington
seeks revenge over Kampuchea," Far Eastern Economic Review, May 1 , 1 981 , p. 22.
An excerpt:
Already there is a shadow over such U.N. agencies as the Food and Agriculture
Organisation and Children's Fund [U.N.I.C.E.F.]. But the main target of the campaign
is the U.N. Development Programme [U.N.D.P.]. . . . The U.S. hopes that the
[U.N.D.P.'s governing] council can be persuaded to do what the U.S. cannot
effectively accomplish alone: inflict a punitive aid slash on Vietnam.
John Pilger, "From Vietnam to El Salvador," New Statesman (U.K.), May 22, 1981 , pp. 6-
8. An excerpt:
Six million Vietnamese are faced with "serious malnutrition," according to a U.N.
Food and Agricultural Organisation group. Rations are now less than even during the
war years: less than half the daily amount of food needed for healthy survival.
A development programme drawn up by the Asian Development Bank was
considered to be vital. "The Americans," said an official of the bank, "have told us to
lose the file on Vietnam." The Japanese and the E.E.C. have sent nothing. Britain
long ago cut off its piddling humanitarian aid.
Daniel Southerland, "U.S. squeezes Vietnam's economy," Christian Science Monitor,
May 1 4, 1 981 , p. 1 . An excerpt:
Through international aid donors, the United States is moving further to tighten the
economic screws on Vietnam. The intention, State Department officials say, is to
"isolate" Vietnam not only diplomatically but also economically. ... At almost every
turn, Vietnam's sources of outside assistance seems to be dwindling. The World
Bank ended its program in 1979, partly because of conditions set by the U.S.
Congress in exchange for approving U.S. contributions to that international institution.
Frangois Nivolon, "Debt shackles Vietnam," Far Eastern Economic Review, May 22,
1981, pp. 59f. An excerpt:
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 31
Prospects for loans from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank are very
bleak, since many donor countries, especially the U.S. and Japan, are opposed to
any assistance to Vietnam.
Louis Wiznitzer, "U.S. tries to punish Vietnam by paring U.N. assistance," Christian
Science Monitor, May 26, 1 981 , p. 6. An excerpt:
The Reagan administration has launched a vigorous, behind-the-scenes campaign at
U.N. headquarters to cut U.N. humanitarian and development aid to Vietnam. . . .
Contrary to some reports, the U.S. initiative is backed by none of its major allies.
Essentially, it is supported by China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and
the Philippines.
Steven Greenhouse, "U.S. Open to Talks on Ties to Vietnam," New York Times, October
24, 1 991 , p. A1 7. An excerpt:
After decades of battling the Japanese, French and Americans, Vietnam is one of the
world's poorest countries, with a per capita income of about $200 a year.
Vietnamese officials were irritated last week when the United States blocked a
French proposal calling for the International Monetary Fund to lend money to
Vietnam.
See also, Harold Ellithorpe, "Mass starvation looms in Vietnam with no aid in
sight," Business Week, May 4, 1981 , p. 70.
58. On the circumstances and development of the American colonies in the
eighteenth century, for comparison to modern Third World countries, see for example,
Robert W. Fogel, "Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality since 1700: Some Preliminary
Findings in Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth," in Stanley L. Engerman
and Robert E. Gallman, eds., Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp. 466-467 (reporting that examination of
European and American data has shown that mid-eighteenth century Americans
achieved diets and had food allotments that were remarkably nutritious by European
standards and were not achieved in Europe until well into the twentieth century;
Americans achieved mean body heights and levels of life expectancy by the middle of
the eighteenth century which were not achieved even by the British upper classes until
the first quarter of the twentieth century, not to speak of less privileged parts of the world).
See also, John W. Frank and Fraser Mustard, "The Determinants of Health from a
Historical Perspective," Daedalus (Health and Wealth), Vol. 123, No. 4, Fall 1994, pp. 1-
19.
59. On pressures from American business to end the Vietnam embargo, see for
example, Robert Greenberger, "U.S. and Vietnam Move Under Pressure Toward
Normalizing Their Relations," Wall Street Journal, October 26, 1992, p. A13. An excerpt:
The U.S ... is under pressure from American companies to resolve the
[M.I.A./P.O.W.] issue so that they can do more than talk about business with
Vietnam. They don't want to be left behind in the race for access to Vietnam's
markets and resources, including potentially rich offshore oil deposits. Washington
also faces pressure from its allies, particularly Japan, who have been ready to relax
the economic embargo on Vietnam since 1989, when Hanoi withdrew its troops from
Cambodia. . . .
Through the 1980s, U.S. officials emphasized that Vietnam should end its
occupation of Cambodia before the U.S. embargo could be lifted. After Vietnam
withdrew its troops, the U.S. then stressed the need to resolve the M.I.A. and P.O.W.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 32
issues before relations could be restored. Meanwhile, U.S. companies look on
Vietnam, with its population of 70 million, as a rich market for consumer products and
such other exports as earth-moving equipment, which will be needed to build
Vietnam's infrastructure.
On the M.I.A./P.O.W. issue, see chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnote 56.
60. One work of recent scholarship estimates the number of "excess deaths"
during the Pol Pot period at 1 .5 million (see Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race,
Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1996, pp. 456-460). Another detailed scholarly source, invoked in
Chomsky's 1 989 remarks in the text, suggests a lower figure of 750,000 deaths above
the norm in the Pol Pot period -- 200,000 to 300,000 of these due to executions -- but
maintains that, "[g]iven the lack of precision inherent in all the data and estimates, it is
impossible to reach more accurate final totals" (see Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-
1982, Boston: South End, 1984, pp. 184-188). Another notable study estimates "excess
deaths" of 1 .05 million in the Khmer Rouge period, based upon the 1 962 census and a
1980 administrative survey about which the authors warn "there is much uncertainty
about [its] accuracy" (see Judith Banister and Paige Johnson, "After the Nightmare: The
Population of Cambodia," in Ben Kiernan, ed., Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia:
The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community, New Haven:
Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1 993, pp. 65-1 39 at p. 91 ). Finally, a slightly
lower range of 700,000 to 1 million excess deaths for the Khmer Rouge period --
suggesting 75,000 to 1 50,000 as a possible range for the number of executions -- was
given in the Report of the Finnish Inquiry Commission which studied Cambodia in the
early 1980s (see Kimmo Kiljunen, ed., Kampuchea: Decade of the Genocide, London:
Zed Books, 1984, pp. 31-33).
The most authoritative presentation of the official U.S. government view, noting that
its "assumptions are highly speculative," alleged that in addition to deaths from
inadequate food, lack of medical care, harsh labor, etc., "50,000 to 1 00,000 former
military personnel, bureaucrats, teachers, and educated people may have been
executed," and that the absolute population decline during the period was between 1 .2
and 1 .8 million people, with an additional 700,000 deaths occurring due to an April 1 979
famine after the fall of the Pol Pot regime (see C.I.A. Research Paper, Kampuchea: A
Demographic Catastrophe, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 1980
(Doc. G.C. 80-1 001 9U)).
It should be emphasized that calculations of total deaths in Cambodia for the years
1975 to 1979 -- often asserted with certainty in the mainstream U.S. press -- have had to
rely heavily, if not completely, on highly speculative growth-rate projections based upon
the one nationwide Cambodian census from the pre-war period, which was performed in
1962. As Michael Vickery comments in Cambodia: 1975-1 982 {p. 185):
[W]hen the war began in Cambodia in 1 970 no one knew what the population was,
there was a difference of over half a million between the official and the most
reasonable expert estimates, and any figure could have been off by 2-300,000. The
war, it may safely be assumed, both altered the normal growth rate and took a high
death toll of which there could be no accurate count, but which both sides have put at
around half a million. Thus estimates for 1975 contain an even larger margin of error.
Studies employing more "impressionistic" estimates are still more unreliable, for obvious
reasons. For instance, Vickery documents cases in which local death estimates proved
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 33
exaggerated by a factor of 60, and others in which the execution estimates for a district
were several times larger than the entire population of the district (pp. 123, 185).
Surveys such as those cited by Kiernan have been based on interviews with refugees
on the Thai-Cambodian border and others in sample sizes of 1 00, 500 or 1 ,500 people,
which were then extrapolated to the Cambodian population as a whole (approximately 6
to 8 million people). Apart from possible issues of reliability in the testimonies
themselves, such studies may suffer from sampling problems.
It also should be stressed that while stories in the mainstream American media
often give the impression that the Khmer Rouge actually executed one million or more
people -- even going as far as to say that the Khmer Rouge "murdered" one million
people (see for example, T.D. Allman, "Sihanouk's Sideshow," Vanity Fair, April 1990,
pp. 1 50f at p. 1 52) -- all of the statistical studies cited above agree that executions
accounted for only a portion of the total number of "excess deaths," with the remainder
being attributable to various conditions of the period (though none contest that there was
vast killing). There has been ample commentary that the brutality of the Khmer Rouge
increased the overall misery of the period -- but based upon current data at least, the
claim that the Khmer Rouge "murdered" one million people requires a somewhat
expanded definition of that term. On the conditions in Cambodia at the time that the
Khmer Rouge took power, see footnote 62 of this chapter. For an argument that the
Khmer Rouge's food programs actually saved the lives of many peasants who would
have starved to death in the conditions of post-war Cambodia, see Testimony of Gareth
Porter, in Hearings Before the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the
Committee on International Relations, Human Rights in Cambodia, House of
Representatives, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 95th Congress, 1st
Session, May 3, 1 977, pp. 1 9-32. For an example of one way that the New York Times
has handled the issue, see Thomas L. Friedman, "U.S. Gulf Policy: Vague 'Vital
Interest,'" New York Times, August 12, 1990, section 1 , p. 1 ("The Khmer Rouge are
held responsible for the deaths of more than a million Cambodians during their reign of
terror in the 1970s")(emphasis added).
61 . For estimates of the death toll in Cambodia in the first half of the 1 970s, see for
example, C.I.A. Research Paper, Kampuchea: A Demographic Catastrophe,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 1980 (Doc. G.C. 80-1 001 9U), p. 2
(concluding that between July 1 , 1 970 and April 1 7, 1 975, "Death rates, high since the
1960s, soared with the addition of an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 war-related
deaths"); Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982, Boston: South End, 1984, pp. 184-
1 88 (accepting as plausible a "war loss" of over 500,000 for the period prior to 1 975,
calculated from the C.I.A. estimates but lower than the C.I.A.'s conclusions); Judith
Banister and Paige Johnson, "After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia," in Ben
Kiernan, ed., Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United
Nations and the International Community, New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia
Studies, 1993, pp. 65-139 (estimating 275,000 "excess deaths" in the pre-1975 period).
See also footnotes 62 and 63 of this chapter.
62. For 1 975 predictions of deaths in Cambodia following the U.S. war, see for
example, Editorial, "Cambodia On The Rack," Far Eastern Economic Review, July 25,
1 975, p. 9 ("Kissinger has been actively leaking White House intelligence on the tragic
sufferings of the Cambodian people, including predictions that one million Cambodians
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 34
will die in the next 12 months"); John Rogers, "Cambodians Are Starving, Refugees
Say," Washington Post, June 23, 1975, p. A7. An excerpt:
Diplomats and officials of international relief organizations . . . point to the food crisis
in Phnom Penh in the months preceding the Khmer Rouge victory as a further
indicator of what must be happening now. . . . [0]ne relief official [said,] "When you
look at the facts, it's difficult to believe there is not mass starvation."
For a description of the conditions in Phnom Penh by the U.S. A.I.D. Director, see
William Goodfellow [Director of the Center for International Studies], "Starvation In
Cambodia," Op-Ed, New York Times, July 14, 1975, p. 25. An excerpt:
The evacuation of Cambodia's larger cities has been sensationalized in the
Western press as a "death march." In fact, it was a journey away from certain death
by starvation, for at the time the former Phnom Penh Government surrendered,
starvation was already a reality in the urban centers, and widespread famine only a
matter of weeks away, while in the countryside there was a sizable food surplus. . . .
The coup d'etat of 1970 was followed by five years of death, suffering and
destruction, with 600,000 Cambodians on both sides killed. Primarily because of a
large-scale United States bombing campaign in which 539,129 tons of bombs were
dropped on the Cambodian countryside, the agrarian economy was shattered. . . .
Last March, the director of the United States Agency for International Development in
Cambodia, Norman Sweet, estimated that in Phnom Penh alone 1.2 million people
were in "desperate need" of United States food. . . . A.I.D. officials reported that
stockpiles of rice in Phnom Pehn could last for six days.
For a U.S. government report on the conditions of vast starvation in Cambodia,
which was issued a month before the Khmer Rouge takeover, see Office of the
Inspector-General of Foreign Assistance, "Cambodia: An Assessment of Humanitarian
Needs and Relief Efforts," Inspection Report, March 12, 1975, in Congressional Record,
March 20, 1 975, Vol. 1 21 , 94th Congress, 1 st Session, pp. 7891 -7894. An excerpt:
The general level of health of almost the entire Cambodian population - the
refugees, the poor, families of military servicemen, and particularly the children, has
deteriorated rapidly. Malnutrition, including the advanced stages of kwashiorkor and
marasmus, has increased dramatically over the last several months. Measles,
malaria, tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases also were increasing in
incidence, often with fatal prognosis. . . . Dispensaries, clinics, hospitals and nutrition
centers, limited in number, were forced to refuse treatment to gravely ill because of
the lack of facilities and shortage of doctors. Overworked medical personnel were
unable to cope with the numbers of people that presented themselves for treatment. .
In Phnom Penh, there are between one and two million refugees [from the U.S.
bombing war] in a city that had a pre-war total population of about 375,000. The
added hundreds of thousands of destitute victims has proven a burden with which
relief programs cannot cope. . . . Almost the totality of those refugees entering
Phnom Penh and the provincial capitals for protection were farmers from the
neighboring countryside. The impact of this influx of farmers into urban areas and
away from the productive farm areas had great economic impact, reducing the
agricultural production of the country to the point where instead of being a substantial
exporter of rice, fruit, fish and livestock Cambodia has become a massive importer of
rice. . . .
Doctors treating Cambodian children reported an increase in malnutrition and
nutrition-related diseases. They found that children were slipping fast into serious
undernourishment and that the state of their health was such that ordinarily simple
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 35
childhood maladies were often fatal. Children were dying of complications brought
about by enteritises, flu, measles, and respiratory diseases. . . . Doctors from the
International Red Cross reported that "Malnutrition now exists on a large scale . . .
complications are stronger now in malnourished children. . . . Thousands and
thousands [of children] may be tipping over. Kwashiorkor, usually a disease in age 2
to 4 years, is occurring in 10-year olds. There is no hope for the future. T.B. is
increasing. Cholera and typhoid have started in January [1975]. . . ."
One voluntary agency operates a child nutrition center in an old converted private
house on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. . . . The Medical Director sadly recounted
that there are never enough beds to take care of all of the children, that they must
turn thousands needing hospitalization away, and without admission here, their fate is
almost certain death. Visibly distraught over the critical situation and the plight of the
children she was seeing daily . . . [she said]: "This morning at our clinic there were a
thousand patients waiting. We numbered 200 this morning. This afternoon we'll see
another 200. All those people are sick. 75 percent are children. We saw only the
worst cases. 50 children should have been admitted this morning. I took six kids. . .
." [From December through the beginning of February, 1 975, over a thousand were
turned away from this center.] It requires little imagination to picture these wretchedly
frail and sickly little bodies, borne away in their weak mothers' arms, carried to a
shanty hovel, a concrete stadium bench or a dirty alley somewhere, to die; certain to
suffer, then to die, untreated, unhospitalized, unfed.
For a similar chilling report in the U.S. press, also written before the Khmer Rouge
took power, see Tom Matthews, "Phnom Penh: Trial by Fire," Newsweek, March 10,
1975, pp. 24-25. An excerpt:
In the Khmer Sovietique hospital, more than 1 ,300 patients struggled for survival
last week. Doctors, nurses, medical corpsmen, drugs and plasma were scarce;
malaria, tuberculosis and dysentery were rampant. Out of desperation, overworked
staffers in some wards tied wounded men to their beds to prevent them from breaking
open their wounds and sutures. Flies covered the face of one such patient, who
could only shake his head feebly in a vain attempt to keep them from crawling into his
mouth. . . .
[A] Brechtian army of impoverished women, orphans and mutilated war veterans
panhandled their way along the boulevards and scoured garbage pails in the back
alleys for edible scraps of food. Thousands of small children, their bellies swollen
from hunger, lingered listlessly in the streets and, in their homes of thatch and waste
lumber at the edges of the city, waited for slow death from kwashiorkor and
marasmus, the terminal forms of malnutrition. . . . Well over 500,000 poverty-stricken
refugees from the war in the countryside were struggling to get by in the capital last
week. Nearly 500 of them squatted miserably in the Svay Dang Kum pagoda ~ the
men in loincloths, the women in rags, the children naked. A miasma of malaria,
diarrhea and despair hovered over the shrine.
For the Finnish Inquiry Commission's findings about the conditions in Cambodia
prior to the Khmer Rouge taking power, see Kimmo Kiljunen, ed., Kampuchea: Decade
of the Genocide, London: Zed Books, 1984, pp. 5-8.
63. On the death rate from starvation in Phnom Penh at the time of the U.S.
withdrawal, see for example, George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, Cambodia:
Starvation and Revolution, New York: Monthly Review, 1 976, pp. 1 9-29 at p. 29 (using
"a conservative estimate" based on numerous accounts of "250 deaths per day from
starvation," and concluding that the death toll "for March alone comes to nearly 8,000
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 36
people," or a rate of 96,000 a year). See also, Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982,
Boston: South End, 1984, pp. 78-79.
64. For the A.I.D. report's prediction, see William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger,
Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1 979, p. 375.
The U.S. A.I.D. report's exact words:
"Slave labor and starvation rations for half the nation's people (probably heaviest
among those who supported the republic) will be a cruel necessity for this year, and
general deprivation and suffering will stretch over the next two or three years before
Cambodia can get back to rice self-sufficiency."
65. On the predictability of a peasant backlash due to the nature of the U.S. war on
Cambodia, see for example, Richard Dudman [captured war correspondent], Forty Days
with the Enemy, New York: Liveright, 1 971 , p. 69 (reporting the author's observation,
while in captivity, that "[t]he bombing and shooting [of the U.S. attack] was radicalizing
the people of rural Cambodia and was turning the countryside into a massive, dedicated,
and effective revolutionary base"). See also, Jon Swain, "Diary of a Doomed City,"
Sunday Times (London), May 1 1 , 1975, pp. 15-19. Evacuated from Phnom Penh
following the Khmer Rouge victory, this British correspondent summarized his
impressions of the Cambodian countryside at the end of the U.S. war:
The United States has much to answer for here, not only in terms of human lives
and massive material destruction; the rigidity and nastiness of the un-Cambodian like
fellows in black who run this country now, or what is left of it, are as much a product
of this wholesale American bombing which has hardened and honed their minds as
they are a product of Marx and Mao. . . .
The war damage here [in the countryside], as everywhere else we saw, is total.
Not a bridge is standing, hardly a house. I am told most villagers have spent the war
years living semi-permanently underground in earth bunkers to escape the bombing. .
. . The entire countryside has been churned up by American B-52 bomb craters,
whole towns and villages razed. So far I have not seen one intact pagoda.
David Chandler, "Revising the Past in Democratic Kampuchea: When Was the Birthday
of the Party," Pacific Affairs, Summer 1 983, pp. 288-300. An excerpt (p. 295):
Aside from killing and maiming tens of thousands of Cambodians who had never fired
a shot at an American, the bombing had several political effects, all beneficial to the
C.P.K. [Khmer Rouge]. One was to demonstrate the party's contention that
Cambodia's principal enemy was the United States. Another was to turn thousands
of young Cambodians into participants in an anti-American crusade, while driving
hundreds of thousands of others into the relative safety (and squalor) of Phnom
Penh, Battambang, and other Khmer Republic strongholds. The destruction of so
many villages, moreover, and the deaths and dislocation of so many people enabled
the C.P.K. to collectivize agriculture in the zones under its control, in May 1973, while
the bombing was going on. When it stopped, the party was able to claim that the
Cambodian revolution, unlike any other in the history of the world, had defeated the
United States. The bombing destroyed a good deal of the fabric of prewar
Cambodian society and provided the C.P.K. with the psychological ingredients of a
violent, vengeful, and unrelenting social revolution.
For a comparison of the Khmer Rouge phenomenon with other peasant rebellions
and what has been called "peasant populism," see Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-
1982, Boston: South End, 1984, ch. 5, especially pp. 271-290.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 37
66. Chomsky notes that the honor is shared by a collection of monsters which
includes Henry Kissinger, F.W. de Klerk, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, Theodore
Roosevelt, and many others -- although obviously not everyone who has received it fits
this category.
67. For a portrayal of Eugene McCarthy as the hero of the Vietnam War opposition,
see for example, Editorial, "The McCarthy Decade," New Republic, December 10, 1977,
p. 5.
68. On strong opposition to Martin Luther King while he was alive, see chapter 9 of
U.P. and its footnote 39.
69. For Neil Postman's analysis of popular media, see for example, Neil Postman,
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, New York:
Viking, 1985; Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New
York: Knopf, 1992.
70. On the number of colonists who fled the American Revolution, see for example,
Carl Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution, New York: Viking, 1 941 . An
excerpt (p. 433):
[Numbers leaving] the United States on account of loyalty to the British Empire . . .
may have been as high as 1 00,000, of whom 35,000 may have gone from New York
alone. About half the exiles settled in Canada, where they and their descendants
were called United Empire Loyalists. The expulsion was so thorough that the next
generation of Americans, with few former loyalists as reminders, almost forgot the
civil aspects of the war and came to think of it as a war solely against England.
Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union: 1781-1789, New York: Harper & Row,
1 987, pp. 13,17 (giving a 1 775 population of 2,600,000 in the American colonies, and a
population of 2,389,300 at the end of the war; estimating the number of Loyalists who
fled at 80,000 to 1 00,000, in a "vast exodus of Loyalists and blacks"). See also, Paul H.
Smith, "The American Loyalists: Notes on their Organization and Numerical Strength,"
William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, Vol. XXV, 1 968, pp. 259-277 (estimating that the
white population of the American colonies was approximately two and one-half million,
and "at least a fifth of the white population -- a half-million people ~ behaved in ways that
enable us to identify them as Loyalist"); Claude Halstead Van Tyne, The Loyalists in the
American Revolution, New York: Peter Smith, 1929 (original 1902), pp. 104-105.
Proportional figures for South Vietnam would be about 4 million supporters of the
United States and 800,000 refugees fleeing, while the total for all of Vietnam would be
approximately double that. While the actual number of people who fled Vietnam is
unknown, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated in late 1978
that "71 ,379 Vietnamese successfully escaped from their homeland by sea during the
last four years." See "U.N. Seeks Solution for 'Boat People,'" New York Times,
November 11, 1978, p. 6.
On blacks and native peoples in the American Revolution, see for example, Ira
Berlin, "The Revolution in Black Life," and Francis Jennings, "The Indians' Revolution,"
in Alfred Young, ed., The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American
Radicalism, DeKalb: University of Northern Illinois Press, 1976, pp. 319-382.
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 38
71 . On the Populists' migration to Canada, see for example, Gabriel Kolko, Main
Currents in American History, New York: Harper and Row, 1 976. An excerpt (pp. 28-29):
Perhaps most disturbing of all to conventional wisdom is the fact that between 1898
and 1914 about one million American residents, the vast majority of whom had been
previously in the states with large agrarian radical movements, moved to Canada,
predominantly the rich wheat-growing provinces. Many had been Populists, and
some outstanding former Populist political leaders were among their ranks, and this
constituency and its inheritance became an important strand in the Canadian social
democratic movement.
Paul F. Sharp, "When Our West Moved North," American Historical Review, Vol. 55,
January 1950, pp. 286-300. An excerpt (p. 290):
Many [emigrants to Canada from the U.S.] sought release from political conditions in
the States which they considered intolerable. It was no accident that the movement
into the Canadian West had its Populist contingent after the election of 1 896. In the
vanguard were men like John W. Leedy, an ex-Populist governor of Kansas, Bertram
Wilson Huffman, a recruit in Coxey's famous army, George Bevington, an "expert" on
money and credits, and Henry Wise Wood, whose Populism profoundly shaped the
farmers' movements in western Canada. Many of the farmers who made the trek into
the Northwest later insisted that this dissatisfaction had reinforced their decision to
leave for Canada. They cited the growth of trusts and the overweening strength of
the "money-power" as developments in the republic they hoped to escape. As one
former lowan testified, "I didn't much mind leaving the States, the trusts were getting
so bad there it didn't seem to be the same country to me any more."
Understanding Power: Chapter Three Footnotes -- 39
Chapter Four
Colloquy
1 . For books critiquing the media, see for example, Edward S. Herman and Noam
Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York:
Pantheon, 1988; Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition,
1997 (original 1983); Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media,
New York: St. Martin's, 1986 (updated edition 1993); Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended
Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, New York: Schocken Books, 1 989; Martin
A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News
Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990; Edward S. Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding
the News in an Age of Propaganda, Montreal: Black Rose, 1 992. See also, John C.
Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and
the Public Relations Industry, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1 995, especially ch. 1 1 .
2. Chomsky's article discussing the U.S. reaction to the 1990 election in Nicaragua
is reprinted in Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1991
(expanded edition 1992), ch. 10.
3. For an example of the "liberal" reaction to the 1 990 Nicaraguan elections, see
Anthony Lewis, "Out of this Nettle," New York Times, March 2, 1 990, p. A33 (at the
dissident extreme within the mainstream media, Lewis noted that the U.S. policies
produced "misery, death and shame," and that "the economic distress that no doubt
moved some Nicaraguans to vote for Mrs. Chamorro was caused in part, after all, by
U.S. sanctions" -- then stated that the result of Washington's "experiment in peace and
democracy" gave "fresh testimony to the power of Jefferson's idea: government with the
consent of the governed. ... To say so seems romantic, but then we live in a romantic
age").
For another example, see Michael Kinsley, "Taking Responsibility: Effect of 80's
U.S. Nicaragua Policy on Chamorro Victory," New Republic, March 19, 1990, p. 4
(noting that "the contra war managed to kill more than 30,000 Nicaraguans," that
"Impoverishing the people of Nicaragua was precisely the point of the contra war and the
parallel policy of economic boycott and veto of international development loans," and
that "the economic disaster was probably the victorious opposition's best election issue"
-- then hailing the "free election" as a "triumph of democracy" that "turned out to be
pleasanter than anyone would have dared to predict").
For a third example, see Tom Wicker, "Bush and Managua," New York Times,
March 1 , 1 990, p. A27 (noting that the Sandinistas lost the election "because the
Nicaraguan people were tired of war and sick of economic deprivation" -- but
nonetheless calling the elections "free and fair").
For another typical reaction by a U.S. commentator, see Johanna McGreary, "But
Will It Work?," Time, March 12, 1990, p. 12. This article acknowledges that U.S. policy
was to:
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 1
wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted
natives overthrow the unwanted government themselves. . . . Since 1985
Washington has strangled Nicaraguan trade with an embargo. It has cut off
Nicaragua's credit at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The
contra war cost Managua tens of millions and left the country with wrecked bridges,
sabotaged power stations and ruined farms. The impoverishment of the people of
Nicaragua was a harrowing way to give the National Opposition Union (U.N.O.) a
winning issue. . . . Nicaragua had been devastated by a 40% drop in G.N. P., an
inflation rate running at 1 ,700% a year and constant shortages of food and basic
necessities. At least 30,000 people had been killed in the war, and 500,000 more had
fled.
Nevertheless, McGreary states that, with the victory of U.N.O. ,
democracy burst forth where everyone least expected it. Given the chance to vote in
an honest and secret election, Nicaraguans decisively repudiated the Sandinista
government, which the U.S. had been struggling to overthrow for a decade.
4. For the New York Times article, see David Shipler, "Victory for U.S. Fair Play,"
Op-Ed, New York Times, March 1 , 1990, p. A27. An excerpt:
It is true that partly because of the confrontation with the U.S., Nicaragua's economy
suffered terribly, setting the stage for the widespread public discontent with the
Sandinistas reflected in Sunday's balloting. But few governments become moderate
during a war; the contra war strengthened Sandinista hard-liners and probably
contributed to their oppressive policies. The way to resolution opened only when
Congress suspended the war, in effect, to give the Sandinistas a chance to proceed
democratically. . . . Thus, Nicaragua's election has vindicated Washington's fledgling
program of providing public, above-board funding to help democratic procedures take
root in countries with authoritarian regimes.
5. For the Boston Globe's article, see Editorial, "Rallying to Chamorro," Boston
Globe, February 27, 1990, p. 12. An excerpt:
[H]aving supported the election of Chamorro, the U.S. must, to shore up the
Chamorro regime, match the millions it spent trying to overthrow Ortega. Ortega's
defenders in the U.S., if they love Nicaraguans and not just Sandinistas, must now
rally to Chamorro. . . . The Sandinista revolution, still potent as an opposition force, is
now, like so many Marxist-Leninist phenomena, consigned to the dustbin of history.
Another blessing of democracy is that outside theories mean little. At long last,
Nicaragua itself has spoken.
6. For Sciolino's article, see Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, February 27, 1990,
p. A14 (the headline "Americans United In Joy, But Divided over Policy" appeared in the
"News Summary" section on p. A2).
7. For Cranston's statement, see U.S. Senate, Hearings Before the Committee on
Foreign Relations, U.S. Policy Toward Nicaragua: Aid to Nicaraguan Resistance
Proposal, 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office,
February 27 and March 4, 1986 (C.I.S. #S381 -20), p. 5 (Cranston stated: "So how do we
deal with a government which we deplore, like the government of Nicaragua? I believe
we should isolate it, leave it to fester in its own juices"). On the methods used in El
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 2
Salvador and Guatemala, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 13; and chapter 2 of U.P.
and its footnote 1 5.
8. For Cockburn's and Ryan's articles, see Alexander Cockburn, "U.S. -Backed
Terrorism Won in Nicaragua, Not Democracy," Wall Street Journal, March 1, 1990, p.
A1 7; Randolph Ryan, "In Nicaragua, a win but not a victory," Boston Globe, February 28,
1990, p. 11.
For a chilling review of Nicaragua's fate since the elections, see for example, Noam
Chomsky, World Orders Old and New, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp.
131-135; Kevin Baxter, "Under the Volcano: Neoliberalism Finds Nicaragua," Nation,
April 6, 1 998, p. 21 ; Hugh O'Shaughnessy, "Nicaragua vies with Haiti as West's
nightmare," Observer (London), September 12, 1993, p. 15. An excerpt:
Nicaragua is now challenging Haiti for the unwanted distinction of being the most
destitute country in the Western Hemisphere. . . . Retinues of tiny, hungry children
wait at every set of traffic lights [in Managua], eager to wipe your car or simply
begging. Infant mortality is the highest in the continent and, according to the U.N., a
quarter of Nicaraguan children are malnourished. Diseases such as cholera and
dengue fever are rampant. Only four in 1 people have jobs. Begging, theft, robbery
and prostitution are on the increase.
People will do anything for a meal. There are soup kitchens on virtually every
street corner. Women boil up fish heads in large cauldrons or cook bitter-tasting but
nutritious soya biscuits in order to save tens of thousands of youngsters from
starvation. . . . The country's leaders seem to care little. Finance Minister Emilio
Pereira boasts that Nicaragua has the lowest inflation in the western hemisphere ~
never mind that its four million people are starving. Most Nicaraguans say life was
much better under the Sandinistas, who ruled in the Eighties. Their health, nutrition,
literacy and agrarian programmes have been scrapped by a government pressed by
the International Monetary Fund and Washington to privatise and cut public spending.
9. On U.S. propaganda in rural Nicaragua, see for example, Howard Frederick,
"Electronic Penetration," in Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas: the
Undeclared War on Nicaragua, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987, pp. 123-142. For
comparison of media conditions in Sandinista Nicaragua and those in the United States
during wartime -- as well as in the leading U.S. client-state, Israel -- see Noam Chomsky,
"U.S. Polity and Society: The Lessons of Nicaragua," in Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan
versus the Sandinistas: the Undeclared War on Nicaragua, Boulder, CO: Westview,
1987, pp. 285-310. See also, John Spicer Nichols, "The Media," in Thomas Walker, ed.,
Nicaragua: The First Five Years, New York: Praeger, 1985, pp. 183-199; Michael
Linfied, Freedom Under Fire: U.S. Civil Liberties in Times of War, Boston: South End,
1990 (reviewing censorship and other civil liberties violations in the United States during
wartime). And see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 4, 6 and 7.
1 0. On the contras' mission to attack "soft targets," see for example, Fred Kaplan,
"U.S. general says contra chances improving," Boston Globe, May 20, 1987, p. 9. An
excerpt:
Gen. John Galvin, leader of the U.S. southern command, told a House
subcommittee yesterday that the contra rebels fighting to overthrow the Nicaraguan
government have a better chance of winning than they did just a few months ago and
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 3
attributed his growing optimism to the contras' new strategy of attacking civilian
targets instead of soldiers.
Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere subcommittee,
Galvin said, "The contras have a fighting chance if we sustain them" with continued
military aid. "It's getting better. In the past few months, I'm more hopeful than I was
before." Asked after the hearing what the contras have achieved the past few
months, Galvin replied, "Lots of victories. They're going after soft targets. They're
not trying to duke it out with the Sandinistas directly."
Julia Preston, "Rebels Still Seeking a Win," Washington Post, September 8, 1987, p. A1
(quoting a U.S. military analyst that the contras are '"still going after small, soft targets,'
like farmers' cooperatives"); Editorial, "America's Guilt -- Or Default," New York Times,
July 1 , 1 986, p. A22 (noting that the World Court ruled unanimously "that the C.I.A.'s
manual encouraging 'contra' attacks on civilians breached humanitarian principles");
Julia Preston, "Contras Burn Clinic During Raid on Village," Washington Post, March 7,
1987, p. A25 (reporting that the contras, "reportedly in high spirits and outfitted by the
C.I.A.," among other things "burned down a church-sponsored health clinic that had
been the pride of the community" in the isolated Nicaraguan village of Tapasle); Ellen
V.P. Wells, "Letter," New York Times, December 31 , 1988, section 1 , p. 22 (describing a
contra attack on a coffee-harvesting cooperative, in which two people were killed, the
coffee equipment was ruined, and ten houses and a health clinic were destroyed).
For additional accounts of contra atrocities, see Reed Brody [Assistant Attorney
General of New York State], Contra Terror in Nicaragua - Report of a Fact-finding
Mission: September 1 984-January 1985, Boston: South End, 1985. This book reprints
150 affidavits and 140 pages of testimony gathered in a fact-finding mission conducted
in the early 1 980s, the results of which were independently corroborated by the
Washington Office on Latin America, a private church-supported human rights
organization, and other human rights organizations. In the affidavits, a mother of two
from the Nicaraguan village of Esteli reports (p. 120):
[F]ive of them [i.e. contras] raped me at about five in the evening . . . they had gang-
raped me every day. When my vagina couldn't take it anymore, they raped me
through my rectum. I calculate that in 5 days they raped me 60 times.
A man describes a contra attack on his cooperative in April 1 984 (p. 71 ):
They had already destroyed all that was the cooperative; a coffee drying machine,
the two dormitories for the coffee cutters, the electricity generators, 7 cows, the plant,
the food warehouse. There was one boy, about 15 years old, who was retarded and
suffered from epilepsy. We had left him in a bomb shelter. When we returned ... we
saw . . . that they had cut his throat, then they cut open his stomach and left his
intestines hanging out on the ground like a string. They did the same to Juan
Corrales who had already died from a bullet in the fighting. They opened him up and
took out his intestines and cut off his testicles.
See also, Thomas Carothers, "The Reagan Years: The 1980s," in Abraham F.
Lowenthal, ed., Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America, Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1 991 , pp. 90-1 22 at p. 1 04 ("Over thirty thousand
Nicaraguans were killed in the contra war and tens of thousands wounded, which in per
capita terms was significantly higher than the number of U.S. persons killed in the U.S.
Civil War and all the wars of the twentieth century combined'). And see footnote 1 2 of
chapter 1 of U.P.
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 4
1 1 . On U.S. economic warfare against Nicaragua, see for example, Michael
Conroy, "Economic Aggression as an Instrument of Low-Intensity Warfare," in Thomas
Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas: the Undeclared War on Nicaragua,
Boulder, CO: Westview, 1 987, pp. 57-79, especially pp. 67f.
1 2. On Nicaragua's economic devastation by the late 1 980s, see for example,
Richard Boudreaux, "Poor Pay, Inflation Spur Exodus; Nicaraguans Leaving in Droves
as Economy Sinks," Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1988, part 1, p. 1 (quoting
economic advisor Francisco Mayorga that: "We are watching Nicaragua become a land
of peasants, a place so poor that it resembles Haiti or the northeast of Brazil. The
country is disintegrating"); Mark Uhlig, "A Sandinista Promise Gone Sour Alienates
Nicaragua's Working Class," New York Times, November 7, 1 989, p. A1 0. An excerpt:
Battered by galloping inflation, Nicaraguan workers have seen their real wages fall by
more than 90 percent since 1981. . . . Over the last two years, the Sandinista
government has taken tough measures to halt the economy's rapid deterioration,
which Government officials ascribe to the heavy burden of the eight-year war against
American-backed rebels. . . . Economists [point out that] it was compounded by an
American embargo on trade with Nicaragua, poor Government management and
uncontrolled inflation caused by high military expenditures. . . . [Official figures show
that per capita private consumption has fallen by at least 70 percent under Sandinista
rule.
The article also notes the connection drawn by Nicaraguans between the election result
and ending the embargo:
Several [Managua workers] said that if relations with the United States were the
answer to the economic crisis the opposition was better suited for the job. Well-
publicized foreign donations to the opposition parties here have been interpreted by
many Nicaraguans as proof that the opposition, not the Sandinistas, has better
access to the foreign money necessary to relieve Nicaragua's crisis.
1 3. On the White House's announcement that the embargo against Nicaragua
would continue unless Chamorro won, see for example, A. P., "Bush Vows To End
Embargo If Chamorro Wins," Washington Post, November 9, 1989, p. A56. The opening
paragraphs:
President Bush promised Wednesday to lift the trade embargo against Nicaragua
if the U.S.-backed presidential candidate, Violeta Chamorro, defeats leftist President
Daniel Ortega in the February election. The statement came after a meeting in which
Chamorro asked Bush for aid to help with economic reconstruction after the election.
[Bush] supports Chamorro's candidacy and signed a $9 million election aid
package that will in large part boost her campaign. A statement issued by White
House spokesman Roman Popadiuk said Chamorro had stressed in a letter to Bush
that her administration "would be committed to reconciliation . . . and reconstruction of
the economy in peace and democracy." "Should this occur, the president said the
United States would be ready to lift the trade embargo and assist in Nicaragua's
reconstruction," the statement said. The embargo was imposed in May 1985,
banning imports from or exports to Nicaragua.
See also footnote 1 2 of this chapter.
The "election aid package" mentioned in the above article would be equivalent to a
flow of $2 billion into a U.S. election campaign. The United States spent more than $1
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 5
per Nicaraguan voter, in a country where the average wage is $20 per month. The U.S. -
- as distinct from totalitarian Nicaragua -- does not permit any monetary contributions
from abroad for such purposes. See C. Scott Littlehale, "U.S. ignores most candidates in
Nicaragua," C.O.H.A. 's [Council On Hemispheric Affairs] Washington Report on the
Hemisphere, November 8, 1989, p. 5.
14. For Orwell's introduction, see the fiftieth anniversary edition of Animal Farm,
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995 (the introduction also is reprinted in Guardian (U.K.),
Features Page, August 26, 1 995). An excerpt (pp. 1 62-1 63 of the Harcourt Brace
edition):
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need
for any official ban.
Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of
sensational items of news -- things which on their own merits would get the big
headlines -- being kept right out of the British press, not because the government
intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that "it wouldn't do" to mention
that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand.
The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men
who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same
kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays,
films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it
is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly
forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is "not done" to say it, just as in mid-
Victorian times it was "not done" to mention trousers in the presence of a lady.
Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with
surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a
fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
15. There is a more detailed discussion of the educational system in chapter 7 of
U.P.
1 6. On exposure to media in the Soviet Union in the 1 980s, see for example,
James R. Miller and Peter Donhowe, "The Classless Society Has a Wide Gap Between
Rich and Poor; But poll finds most satisfied with living conditions," Washington Post
National Weekly Edition, February 1 7, 1 986, p. 1 6 (studies of Soviet society based on
interviews with former Soviet citizens now living in the United States found that 96
percent of the middle elite and 77 percent of blue-collar workers in the Soviet Union
listened to foreign radio broadcasts, while the alternative press reached 45 percent of
high-level professionals, 41 percent of political leaders, 27 percent of managers, and 14
percent of blue-collar workers).
17. On Danchev's broadcasts, see for example, "Moscow Radio (Oops!) Calls
Soviets 'Invaders,'" New York Times, May 24, 1983, p. A5; Serge Schmemann,
"Moscow's Facade on War and Peace Cracks a Bit," New York Times, May 29, 1983,
section 1 , p. 6.
1 8. On the U.S. media and the "invasion" of Vietnam, see footnote 1 of chapter 2
of U.P.
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 6
1 9. For LeMoyne's story, see James LeMoyne, "As Salvadoran Vote Nears,
Political Killings Increase," New York Times, February 29, 1988, p. A12. The relevant
passage:
In addition, there have been rebel killings aimed directly at stopping the elections
next month. Villagers say guerrillas publicly executed two peasants in the town of
Guatajiagua in Morazan department three weeks ago because they had applied for
and received new voter registration cards.
According to the villagers, the guerrillas placed the voting cards of Juan Martin
Portillo and Ismael Portillo in their mouths after executing them as a warning to others
not to take part in the elections. Rebel units in the area have told all villages not to
vote and not to propose candidates for mayor.
20. For Norton's story, see Mark Cooper, LA. Weekly, May 27-June 2, 1 988; Chris
Norton, "U.S. Media Promotes Salvadoran Army Disinformation," Extra! [FAI.R. journal],
Vol. 12, No. 1 , July/August 1988, p. 1 ; Alexander Cockburn, "The Natural History of
LeMoyne, Continued," Nation, August 27, 1988, p. 155.
21 . For the New York Times's correction, see "Editors' Note," New York Times,
September 15, 1988, p. A3. An excerpt:
The article fell short of the Times's reporting and editing standards. It should not
have left the impression that it was based on firsthand interviewing, and it should
have explained why firsthand confirmation was not available.
LeMoyne later conceded that he was not even in El Salvador at the time. See D.D.
Guttenplan, "Perestroika at the Times?," Newsday (Long Island, NY), September 21 ,
1988, part II, p. 2.
22. On the contras' technological sophistication and support, see for example,
James LeMoyne, "In Nicaragua, Forebodings of Warfare Without End," New York Times,
June 28, 1987, section 4, p. 3. An excerpt:
The Central Intelligence Agency has equipped the rebels with a computer center that
intercepts and decodes hundreds of Sandinista radio messages a day. The
intelligence is then sent via portable computers with special encoders to rebel units in
the field. The C.I.A. also makes weekly air drops to the units, a highly effective tactic
that has allowed the contras to remain inside Nicaragua rather than to have to return
to Honduras as they did in the past. "The air operation is the key to the war," said a
Western diplomat in Managua who monitors the rebels. "Without it, the contras
couldn't make it."
Marjorie Miller, "Lagging C.I.A.-Run Resupply Called Factor in Slow Progress of
Contras," Los Angeles Times, March 1 , 1 987, part 1 , p. 6 (reporting the contras'
complaints that they need more pilots and aircraft, and discussing their reliance on U.S.
air supply); Peter Grier, "Contras, Awash in U.S. Funds, Buy Weapons," Christian
Science Monitor, June 23, 1987, p. 1 (on contra leaders' requests for "more light planes,
and small boats for river patrol"); Julia Preston, "Civilians Still Caught in the Cross Fire
of Contra War," Washington Post, February 4, 1 988, p. A25 (noting that the contras had
equipment so modern that all U.S. military units did not yet have it).
23. On the State Department's allegations about an arms flow from Nicaragua to
the F. M.L.N, in El Salvador, see for example, Morris Morley and James Petras, The
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 7
Reagan Administration and Nicaragua: How Washington Constructs Its Case for
Counterrevolution in Central America, New York: Institute for Media Analysis, 1 987, pp.
40-45 (reviewing the major State Department claims).
24. For David MacMichael's testimony before the International Court of Justice (the
World Court) on September 16, 1985, see U.N. General Assembly Record, U.N.
A/40/907, S/17639, November 19, 1985, pp. 24-66, especially pp. 29-39.
For the World Court's decision, see International Court of Justice, Reports of
Judgments, Advisory Opinions and Orders: 1986, "Case Concerning Military and
Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua" {Nicaragua v. United States of
America), Judgment of June 27, 1 986. An excerpt (paragraph 1 53):
[E]vidence of military aid from or through Nicaragua remains very weak. This is so
despite the deployment by the United States in the region of extensive technical
resources for tracking, monitoring and intercepting air, sea and land traffic . . . and its
use of a range of intelligence and information sources in a political context where,
moreover, the [U.S.] Government had declared and recognized surveillance of
Nicaragua as a "high priority." The Court cannot of course conclude from this that no
transborder traffic in arms existed, although it does not seem particularly
unreasonable to believe that traffic of this kind, had it been persistent and on a
significant scale, must inevitably have been discovered, in view of the magnitude of
the resources used for that purpose. The Court merely takes note that the
allegations of arms-trafficking are not solidly established; it has not, in any event,
been able to satisfy itself that any continuing flow on a significant scale took place
after the early months of 1 981 .
The Court also ruled (pp. 1 26-1 28, especially paragraphs 249 and 252) that, as a matter
of law, even if such an arms supply existed, it would not constitute "armed attack"
justifying a U.S. response, as the U.S. government had claimed. See also chapter 3 of
U.P. and its footnotes 43, 44 and 45.
25. For a foreign report of Nicaraguans' ability to locate contra arms-supply flights,
see for example, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Who Helped Oliver North?," Spectator
(U.K.), May 16, 1987, p. 13 ("Captain Ricardo Wheelock, the head of the Sandinista
military intelligence, was even able to give us fairly precise details of these flights, but
nobody bothered to chase the story until Eugene Hasenfus [a C.I.A. pilot] was shot down
and captured last October"). See also footnote 27 of this chapter.
26. For LeMoyne's story on arms supplies to El Salvador, see James LeMoyne,
"Latin Pact Seen as Helpful to Duarte," New York Times, August 13, 1987, p. A10 ("The
rebels deny receiving such support from Nicaragua, but ample evidence shows it exists,
and it is questionable how long they could survive without it").
27. On escalating U.S. supply flights after the peace accords, see for example,
U.N. General Assembly [Plenary Meetings], A/42/P.V.67, November 16, 1987, p. 7
(report of 275 supply and surveillance flights detected from August 7, 1 987 to November
3, 1987). Chomsky clarifies his point about the United States's actions {Necessary
Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1 989, p. 92):
The United States was of course not a signatory, so technically speaking it could not
"violate" the accords. An honest accounting, however, would have noted - indeed,
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 8
emphasized -- that the United States acted at once to render the accords nugatory.
Nothing of the sort is to be found.
28. On Lelyveld's letter, see Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, "LIE: The
Sandinistas seek to export their revolution by arming Salvadoran guerrillas," Extra!,
October/November 1987, p. 5 (Lelyveld stated that LeMoyne's terminology was
"imprecise," but "even our best correspondents -- and James LeMoyne is one of our best
-- are not perfect").
29. For repetitions of the arms flow falsehood in the New York Times, see for
example, statements and assumptions in George Volsky, "Contras Agree to Attend
Truce Talks," New York Times, January 18, 1988, p. A6; Stephen Engelberg, "Salvador
Rebel Arms: Noriega Link?," New York Times, December 18, 1987, p. A8; Bernard
Trainor, "Contras' Future: Crippled as Warriors," New York Times, April 3, 1988, section
1,p. 16.
30. For the interchange of letters with Lelyveld, see Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting, "The New York Times Recants," Extra!, Vol. 2, No. 2, September/October
1988, p. 2.
31 . For LeMoyne's final story on the topic, see James LeMoyne, "Salvador Rebels:
Where Do They Get the Arms?," New York Times, November 24, 1 988, p. A14. An
excerpt:
The charges are extremely difficult to prove. Evidence of Sandinista support for the
rebels is largely circumstantial and is open to differing interpretations. It includes
accounts of deserters who could lie or exaggerate.
32. For discussion of the media as a propaganda organ, see chapter 1 of U.P.
33. For the Congressional report on COINTELPRO, see U.S. Senate, Final Report
of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, Intelligence
Activities and the Rights of Americans, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 94-755,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976, Books II and III, especially Book III,
p. 223. This report extensively reviews the F.B.I.'s COINTELPRO program; provides
reprints of F.B.I, memoranda and fake letters sent to disrupt and promote violence within
activist groups; and also documents the Bureau's role in the killing of Black Panther
leader Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.
The extensive literature on COINTELPRO includes the following studies: James
Kirkpatrick Davis, Spying On America: The F.B.I.'s Domestic Counterintelligence
Program, New York: Praeger, 1992; Ross Gelbspan, Break-ins, Death Threats, and the
F.B.I.: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement, Boston: South End,
1 991 ; Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents
from the F.B.I, s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, Boston: South End,
1 990 (includes dozens of photographically-reproduced COINTELPRO documents,
mostly stolen from top secret F.B.I, files); Brian Glick, War at Home: Covert Action
Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It, Boston: South End, 1 989; Ward
Churchill and James Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The F.B.I.'s Secret Wars on
the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, Boston: South End, 1 988;
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 9
Robert J. Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America, From 1870 to the Present,
Cambridge: Schenkman, 1978; Morton H. Halpern et al., The Lawless State: The Crimes
of U.S. Intelligence Agencies, New York: Penguin, 1976; Nelson Blackstock, ed.,
COINTELPRO: The F.B.I, 's Secret War on Political Freedom, New York: Random
House, 1976 (includes dozens of reproduced documents). See also, John C. Stauber
and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public
Relations Industry, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, especially ch. 5 (on
COINTELPRO-style tactics that are being carried out by corporations, with the
assistance of P.R. firms).
On the scale of the COINTELPRO program, see for example, Frank J. Donner, The
Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System,
New York: Knopf, 1 980. An excerpt (pp. 1 27, 1 31 , 1 37):
Despite widespread criticism of over-targeting, as late as 1975 the [F.B.I.] was
conducting surveillance of 1 100 organizations and their subdivisions. But this is only
the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of individuals fall under intelligence scrutiny, either
as primary targets or as the subject of an "investigative matter" as a result of their
suspected or confirmed involvement in group activities. Thus, the G.A.O.
[Congress's General Accounting Office] . . . concludes that in 1 974, out of a sample
of some 19,659 domestic intelligence case files, about 90 percent (17,528) involved
individual targets investigated because of a suspected relationship (membership,
support) to a target group or, in a relatively small number of cases, because of a
suspected personal involvement in an activity, such as a demonstration. This
concentration on individuals accounts for the enormous number, 930,000 in all, of
investigations conducted by the Bureau from 1 955 to 1 978. In a single year, 1 972,
the Bureau opened some 65,000 domestic files with an internal or national security
classification. . . .
While Do Not File procedures for destroying records of burglaries as well as
cover-ups of field data preclude an accurate compilation, a more realistic estimate of
burglaries to steal information and forcible entries to install microphones from the
early forties until the early seventies against domestic targets is close to 7500. . . .
[T]he relative prominence of informers as a surveillance tool [is] corroborated by
subsequent government submissions in the course of litigation: from 1940 until April
1978, the F.B.I, deployed some 37,000 informers - 29,166 in classification 134
(security) and 7893 in 170 (racial and extremist). . . . Even as late as 1976, in the
face of mounting criticism, the F.B.I, fiscal year budget allocated $7,401,000 for its
political informer programs, more than twice the budget for organized crime informers.
See also, William M. Kunstler, "Writers of the Purple Page," Nation, December 30, 1 978,
pp. 721 f (presenting stories of F.B.I, anonymous mailings to employers, loved ones, and
organizations to help destroy activists' lives and thereby help neutralize them, and to
fragment and divert activist groups); John Kifner, "F.B.I., Before Raid, Gave Police Plan
of Chicago Panther's Flat," New York Times, May 25, 1974, p. A14 (on the Fred
Hampton assassination).
34. On the bombing of Cambodia being "secret" due to the U.S. media's failure to
report what they knew, see for example, U.S. Senate, Hearings Before the Committee on
Armed Services, Bombing in Cambodia, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, July/August 1974, pp. 158-160. These hearings confirm that
information about the U.S. bombings of Cambodia was publicly available as early as
nine days after they began, with a March 27, 1 969, Press Release from the Royal
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 10
Government of Cambodia, distributed through the Foreign Broadcast Information
Service. This Press Release stated that "the Cambodian population living in the border
regions has been bombed and strafed almost daily by U.S. aircraft, and the number of
people killed, as well as material destruction, continues to grow." On April 2, 1 969, the
same source then distributed excerpts from a press conference held by the reigning
monarch of Cambodia, Prince Sihanouk, in which he stated:
[The media] pretend that I would not oppose U.S. bombings of communist targets
within my frontiers. But I have never said that I would not oppose this. Nobody, no
chief of state in the world placed in the same same [sic] situation as I am, would
agree to let foreign aircraft bomb his own country. ... It is not only the communists
who receive U.S. bombs on their heads. Unarmed and innocent people have been
victims of U.S. bombs. You know very well that in Cambodia ... we were very bitter
and angry [at] news about the latest bombing, the victims of which were Khmer
peasants, women and children in particular. I wish to reaffirm that I have always
been opposed to the bombings.
Prince Sihanouk then appealed to the Western press "to publicize abroad this very clear
stand of Cambodia -- that is, I will in any case oppose all bombings on Cambodian
territory under whatever pretext. I will oppose them under whatever pretext for the simple
reason, I repeat, that the victims of U.S. bombings are never the communists but only the
peasants and children." Sihanouk's opposition to the American bombing has since
been erased from history. See for example, Seth Mydans, "Death of Pol Pot," New York
Times, April 1 7, 1 998, p. A1 4 (claiming that Sihanouk did not oppose the U.S. bombing).
See also, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon, 1 988, pp. 274-280
(reviewing the dispatches from Cambodia which actually appeared in the U.S. press);
Noam Chomsky, At War With Asia: Essays on Indochina, New York: Pantheon, 1 970,
pp. 122-125 (referring to numerous publicly available sources on the U.S. bombing of
Cambodia, including a Cambodian Government White Paper of January 3, 1 970, years
before there was coverage of it by the U.S. press); Noam Chomsky, "Nixon's defenders
do have a case," More, December 1975, pp. 28-29.
35. On the casualty figures for the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, see chapter 3 of
U.P. and its footnotes 61 , 62 and 63.
36. On the popularity of the daily labor press in England and its audience's
involvement, but its fatal inability to attract capital, see for example, James Curran,
"Advertising and the Press," in James Curran, ed., The British Press: a Manifesto,
London: MacMillan, 1978, pp. 229-267. An excerpt (pp. 251-253):
The Daily Heralds central problem was not that it appealed to fewer people but
that it appealed to the wrong people. . . . [The Daily Herald appealed] overwhelmingly
to working-class rather than to middle-class readers. These characteristics had
correlates in terms of purchasing behaviour that made the Daily Herald a highly
marginal advertising medium. ... But if the Daily Herald was lacking in appeal to
advertisers it did not lack in appeal to a section of the general public. . . . The Daily
Herald "idea" may be regarded as misguided, its readers can be dismissed as being
of no social consequence. But there were, as it happens, a lot of them - in fact over
five times as many readers as those of The [London] Times. . . . With 4.7 million
readers in the last year, the Daily Herald actually had almost double the readership of
The Times, the Financial Times and the Guardian combined. Indeed, when it was
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 1 1
forced to close, the Daily Herald was probably amongst the twenty largest circulation
dailies in the world. It died, not from lack of readers, but because its readers did not
constitute a valuable advertising market. Regular Daily Herald readers were also
exceptionally devoted to their paper. Unpublished survey research shows that Daily
Herald readers thought more highly of [and read more in] their paper than the regular
readers of any other popular newspaper. . . .
[T]he Daily Herald was only one of a number of casualties of the advertising
licensing system. The News Chronicle, a legatee of the dissenting radical, liberal
tradition, was forced to close in 1960 with a circulation six times that of the Guardian,
and over double that of The Times and the Guardian combined. It paid a heavy price
for appealing to an inferior quality of reader (even though its readers were almost as
devoted as Herald readers). . . . The radical Sunday Citizen . . . also finally
succumbed in 1967, after being progressively strangulated by lack of advertising
support.
Similarly, the study describes how the mainstream London Times lost money in the late
1 960s and early 1 970s by seeking a wider readership. Although its circulation rose by
fully 69 percent through "an aggressive promotion campaign that recruited large
numbers of lower-middle and even working-class readers," that change did not create a
corresponding increase in advertising to offset the costs, and the paper "was forced to
set about shedding part of its new readership as a conscious act of management policy"
(p. 258).
See also, Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to
Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1 990, p. 59 ("T.V. and radio get
nearly 1 00 percent of their income from advertisers, newspapers 75 percent, and
magazines about 50 percent. . . . Between 60 and 70 percent of newspaper space is
reserved for ads, while 22 percent of T.V. time is filled with commercials"); Erik Barnouw,
The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate, New York: Oxford University Press, 1 978
(on the constraining influences of advertising on the media); Ben H. Bagdikian, The
Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997 (original 1983), especially chs. 6
to 9; James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: The Press and
Broadcasting in Britain, London: Routledge, 1981, pp. 1 18-132; Alfred McClung Lee,
The Daily Newspaper in America: The Evolution of a Social Instrument, New York:
Macmillan, 1 937. And see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 54.
37. For the "breed, and bleed, and advertise their misery" statement, see Ruth
Wisse [then a Professor at McGill University in Montreal, now a Professor at Harvard and
Director of its Center for Jewish Studies], "Israel and the Intellectuals: A Failure of
Nerve?," Commentary, May 1 988, p. 20. The quotation in the text is exact.
38. For commentary in Israel on Palestinians "raising their heads" and similar
degradation, see for example, Gad Lior, Yediot Ahronot (Israel), January 24, 1 988;
Shulamith Hareven, Yediot Ahronot (Israel), March 25, 1988; Avigdor Feldman,
Hadashot (Israel), January 1 , 1 988; Amnon Denkner, Ha'aretz (Israel), January 9, 1 994;
Olek Netzer, Davar (Israel), January 20, 1993; Zvi Barel, Ha'aretz (Israel), April 20, 1982;
Yedidia Segal, Nekudah (Israel), September 3, 1982.
On the conditions under which the Palestinians have lived since the 1 967 Israeli
occupation, see for example, Raymonda Hawa Tawil, My Home, My Prison, New York:
Holt, Rienhart, 1980; Rafik Halabi, The West Bank Story, New York: Harcourt Brace,
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 12
1 981 ; Raja Shehadeh, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank, London:
Quartet, 1982; Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal
Account of the Intifada Years, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
In a stirring early account -- unfortunately now out of print -- Chomsky described
some of these conditions in more detail {Towards A New Cold War: Essays on the
Current Crisis and How We Got There, New York: Pantheon, 1 982, pp. 275-278):
Occasional reports in the U.S. press of the more sensational incidents (e.g. the
terrorist bombings in which two West Bank mayors were severely injured, or the
practice of firing on demonstrators) do not give an adequate picture of the real story
of systematic degradation, humiliation, and suppression of even the most minimal
form of national self-expression. The character of the occupation is revealed more
clearly by these regular practices. A few examples will serve to illustrate the general
picture.
In a Jerusalem suburb, the army forced hundreds of inhabitants from their homes
at midnight, then "concentrating" them outdoors a kilometer away for a two-hour
lecture warning against "rioting." A man of sixty-five who was ill was compelled to go
by force. Inhabitants of the Daheisha refugee camp south of Bethlehem complain
that on the night of December 25, 1 979, the camp was surrounded by soldiers and all
inhabitants between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five were compelled to stand
outside in a driving rain from midnight to noon the next day while soldiers searched
the houses; the governor warned of similar punishments if children continued to throw
stones at Israeli cars. A man who asked why he was being arrested was beaten up
while soldiers broke furniture in his house. On January 29, four hundred males from
ages ten to seventy were again dragged from their houses at eight P.M. and made to
stand outside in a cold winter rain for thirteen hours. The same thing happened at the
refugee camp of Jalazoun, where inhabitants were compelled to spend an entire night
out of doors in a snowstorm: "Children had probably thrown stones at Israeli cars
after the chemistry laboratory of the school was destroyed by settlers, who did this in
retaliation for stones being thrown, probably following cars being sabotaged in the
camp by settlers, after children threw stones, etc., etc., etc." Refugees report that
"the new method, actually not so new, but much more sophisticated, is humiliation.
The soldiers and the settlers want first of all to humiliate us. But they don't
understand that we have lost everything and the only thing we have left is our honor
and that they will never be able to take that away from us." Shortly after, thousands
of dunams of cultivated land were sprayed by planes with herbicides in villages near
Hebron, partly within the Green Line and partly within the occupied West Bank;
several weeks earlier the same punishment had been meted out by the Green patrol,
under the command of Minister of Agriculture (now Minister of Defense) Ariel Sharon,
in the area of Kafr Kassem.
"Residents of Silwad village, north of Ramallah, complain that during a curfew that
was imposed last weekend on the village by the military government, soldiers broke
into their homes, and that some of them beat up youths, humiliated adults and old
people, stole vast sums of Israeli and foreign currency, and destroyed large
quantities of food." The reporter, Yehuda Litani, writes that "at first I could not believe
what I heard, but the details (which were also told to other reporters) were repeated
again and again in all versions by different people in the village. Only one woman
lodged a complaint, the others felt that it was useless to complain." Soldiers
terrorized the village, beating old people and children with their hands and rifle butts.
An eleven-month-old baby was taken out of a cradle and thrown on the floor.
Schoolbooks and children's notebooks were destroyed. "Their whole aim was to
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 13
take revenge on us and to humiliate us," one villager reported. Brutal treatment
continued when some were taken away for questioning. It was later announced that
investigators "had verified some of the villagers' complaints."
There are many similar reports. Dani Rubinstein writes in Davar (May 9, 1980)
that he witnessed a search in a West Bank refugee camp after two children had
thrown stones at a military vehicle, during which all men and children from the camp
were forced to sit out of doors for two whole days for intense questioning: "One of the
officers who had conducted the questioning told me that he doesn't know whether he
will find the two children, but he is sure that during the long hours of questioning under
the hot sun many other children will decide to throw stones at us at the first
opportunity." Amnon Kapeliouk reports that his daughter saw five soldiers "beating
an Arab merchant who shut down his shop" in the Old City of Jerusalem; he reports
also that all telephones in Bethlehem had been cut off for the past month and a half
(Al Hamishmar, June 13, 1980). Knesset member Uri Avneri read in the Knesset a
letter by soldiers reporting instructions concerning curfew violations given to them by
a senior officer: "Anybody you catch outside his home -- first thing you beat him with
a truncheon all over his body, except for his head. Don't have pity on anyone. Don't
explain anything. Beat first, then, after you have finished, explain why. ... If you
catch a small child, get out the whole family, line them up and beat the father before
all his children. Don't consider the beating a right; it is your duty -- they do not
understand any other way."
It is standard practice in East Jerusalem and elsewhere for the military units to
compel merchants at gunpoint to open their shops, sometimes after dragging them
from their homes, to break business strikes. The army also arrested fifty-two
members of the general committee of teachers who struck in violation of the
governor's orders. Teachers report that they are beginning to think "that the military
authorities and the Israeli government intend to starve the teachers in the West Bank
so that in the end they shall all want to emigrate to the oil countries." The purpose of
the collective punishments, Amnon Kapeliouk writes, is "to make the inhabitants want
to leave ... to make life unbearable and then the inhabitants will either rebel, and be
expelled by means that are prepared for this event (as General Yariv has revealed,
while condemning these horrifying plans) or they will prefer to leave voluntarily." The
reference to General Yariv is in connection with his comment on "widely held
opinions" in favor of exploiting any future war situation in order to expel seven to eight
hundred thousand Arabs. Yariv stated that such opinions were circulating freely, and
that he had received information that such a plan existed and that the means for its
execution had been prepared. Yehuda Litani writes that a retired army officer told him
that in 1969-70 there was an Israeli operation sponsored not by the army but by a
"governmental body" (presumably, the secret police), with the full cooperation of the
military administration, aimed at getting twenty thousand people from the refugee
camps to leave the country (only ten thousand left).
Palestinian educational institutions have been the target of particular brutality. To
cite only one example, in March 1978 Israeli troops surrounded a school in Beit Jala
south of Jerusalem, "ordered the pupils, all in their early teens, to close their
windows, then hurled beer-can-size canisters of U.S. -made antiriot gas into the
packed classrooms. . . . The students in second-floor classes were so frightened
that they leaped 18 ft. to the rocky ground below. Ten . . . were hospitalized with
fractures; several, according to the head of the local hospital, will have lifelong limps.
Though military authorities at first denied the incident, it was confirmed to Time
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 14
Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff by a score of local residents" (Time, April 3,
1 978). There have been many similar cases.
Constraints on political expression have reached such a ludicrous extreme that
even symbolic expression is banned. Painters are forbidden to exhibit their work
because the military authorities claim that they have "political themes" -- e.g., a dove
breaking out of prison. Or because they use the colors that appear on the
Palestinian flag, whatever the theme. Under new laws, the curriculum of Palestinian
educational institutions such as Bir Zeit College is controlled by the authorities; the
college, in fact, barely functions because of regular military harassment. A
Palestinian who owns a gallery from which paintings were confiscated comments that
soon "they'll pass the 'Dream Law' (security) 1 980 and throw us in prison for daring
to dream about liberty and independence and prisons shall be filled with Palestinians."
In fact, some two hundred thousand security prisoners and detainees have passed
through Israeli jails, about 20 percent of the inhabitants of the territories; "this has led
to horrendous overcrowding inside the jails, and to appalling human suffering and
corruption." Reports of beatings and torture under interrogation, random arrests,
endless harassment, and, in general, a pogrom-like atmosphere created both by
settlers (who have a paramilitary status) and the military forces have become so
common that it is almost superfluous to cite specific examples.
On torture of Palestinians during the Israeli occupation, see for example, "Israel and
Torture," Sunday Times (London), June 19, 1977, pp. 1, 16-21 (careful and detailed
study by the London Sunday Times Insight Team, which was offered to both the New
York Times and Washington Post but rejected for publication). An excerpt:
[Tjorture [of Palestinians] takes place in at least six centres. ... All of Israel's
security services are implicated. . . . Torture is organised so methodically that it
cannot be dismissed as a handful of "rogue cops" exceeding orders. It is systematic.
It appears to be sanctioned at some level as deliberate policy.
Torture seems to be used for three purposes. The first is, of course, to extract
information. The second motive, which seems at least as common, is to induce
people to confess to "security" offenses, of which they may, or may not, be guilty.
The extracted confession is then used as the principal evidence in court: Israel
makes something of the fact that it has few political prisoners in its jails, only those
duly convicted according to law. The third purpose appears to be to persuade Arabs
in the occupied territories that it is least painful to behave passively.
See also, U.N. General Assembly Special Political Committee, document
A/SPC/32/L.1 2, November 1 1 , 1 977 (60 pages of testimony before the U.N. Special
Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population
of the Occupied Territories, by two members of the Sunday Times Insight Team, Paul
Eddy and Peter Gillman); Amnesty International, Five Years after the Oslo Agreement,
September 1998 (estimating that 1600 Palestinians are routinely arrested by Israeli
military forces every year, half "systematically tortured"); Amnesty International, Human
Rights and U.S. Security Assistance 1995, 1996 ("Palestinians under interrogation
continue to be systematically tortured or ill-treated"; thousands of Palestinians were
detained on such charges as opposing "the peace process," while some have "been
detained for nine years without trial"); Human Rights Watch, Torture and Ill-Treatment:
Israel's Interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, 1994 (condemning
Israel's "systematic torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians under interrogation");
Nicholas Guyatt, The Absence of Peace: Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,
London: Zed, 1 998, especially ch. 4.
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 15
Several forms of systematic and routine torture of Palestinian detainees finally were
formally outlawed by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999, pending their potential
reinstitution by the Israeli legislature. See for example, Deborah Sontag, "Israel Court
Bans Most Use Of Force In Interrogations," New York Times, September 7, 1999, p. A1
("the Israeli Supreme Court today unexpectedly outlawed the security service's routine
practice of using physically coercive interrogation methods, which critics have long
denounced as torture," although the Court "suggested that Parliament draft legislation if
it wanted to override the ruling").
On conditions for the Palestinians, see also chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 77
and 78.
39. On the pre-Gulf War international consensus on a solution to the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 1 04.
40. It might be noted that, despite misrepresentations sometimes leveled against
him to the contrary, Chomsky's stance on a preferred settlement in the Middle East has
remained consistent since his first publications on the topic. See for example, Noam
Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood, New York:
Pantheon, 1974, especially ch. 3, pt. II. An excerpt (pp. 132, 138):
A fifth approach [to a settlement] is the federal model . . . with federated republics,
each dominated by one national group, and efforts, one would hope, to achieve
social, economic, and political parity. With all of its problems, this approach has
possibilities. The inevitable discrimination in a multinational society in which one
group dominates might be relieved through the federal structure. ... A federal
approach would imply that in the short run, at least, Palestinian Arabs who wish to
return to their former homes within the Jewish-dominated region would have to
abandon their hopes; and, correspondingly, that Jews who wish to settle in the Arab-
dominated region would be unable to do so. Personally, I feel that among those
policies that are at all realistic, given present circumstances, some kind of federal
solution is the most desirable. . . .
Surely it is obvious that a critical analysis of Israeli institutions and practices does
not in itself imply antagonism to the people of Israel, denial of the national rights of the
Jews of Israel, or lack of concern for their just aspirations and needs. The demand
for equal rights for Palestinians does not imply a demand for Arab dominance in the
former Palestine, or a denial of Jewish national rights. The same is true of critical
analysis that questions the existence of the state institutions in their present form.
Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians,
Boston: South End, 1983. An excerpt (p. 39):
I will adopt [certain assumptions] as a framework for discussion. The first of these is
the principle that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are human beings with human
rights, equal rights; more specifically, they have essentially equal rights within the
territory of the former Palestine. Each group has a valid right to national self-
determination in this territory. Furthermore, I will assume that the State of Israel
within its pre-June 1 967 borders had, and retains, whatever one regards as the valid
rights of any state within the existing international system.
For Chomsky's view of the P.L.O., see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnote 87.
41 . On Kissinger's goal of producing a "stalemate," see Henry Kissinger, White
House Years, Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. An excerpt (pp. 1279, 1291):
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 16
In late February [1971], [U.N. Mediator] Jarring's explorations foundered on the
Israeli refusal to accept the principle of return to the 1967 borders and the Egyptian
insistence on such a principle. Jarring had made some progress, however; Egypt
had agreed to a peace agreement, rather than a mere declaration of non-belligerency,
if Israel returned to the 1967 borders. But since that was adamantly refused, the
Jarring mission was in effect over. There was some sentiment in the U.S.
government for imposing the Rogers Plan on the Israelis. But the President had no
stomach for it in the middle of the Laotian crisis. And it made no strategic sense. As
long as Egypt was in effect a Soviet military base, we could have no incentive to turn
on an ally on behalf of a Soviet client. This is why I was always opposed to
comprehensive solutions that would be rejected by both parties and that could only
serve Soviet ends by either demonstrating our impotence or being turned into a
showcase of what could be exacted by Moscow's pressure. My aim was to produce
a stalemate until Moscow urged compromise or until, even better, some moderate
Arab regime decided that the route to progress was through Washington. . . .
During March [1972], [Soviet Ambassador to the U.S.] Dobrynin was pressing me
to formulate a more comprehensive peace program of our own. ... My strategy had
not changed. Until some Arab state showed a willingness to separate from the
Soviets, or the Soviets were prepared to dissociate from the maximum Arab program,
we had no reason to modify our policy.
Chomsky remarks about this passage ( World Orders Old and New, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994, p. 209):
These comments are remarkable. Of the two major Arab states, Egypt was plainly
showing "a willingness to separate from the Soviets," and the question doesn't arise
for Saudi Arabia, which did not even have diplomatic relations with the hated
Russians -- who had, furthermore, never associated themselves with the "maximum
Arab program" but kept well within the international consensus. As Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Middle East specialist Seth Tillman pointed out, "the official
Soviet position has been consistent since 1 948 in support of Israel's right to exist and
consistent since 1 967 in support of Israel's right to a secure national existence, as
called for in Security Council Resolution 242, within its 1967 borders" [see Seth
Tillman, The United States in the Middle East, Bloomington: University of Indiana
Press, 1 982, p. 246].
42. The reference to using Israel as a counterweight to "radical Arab nationalism"
is in a declassified policy paper prepared by the National Security Council Planning
Board commenting on the Memorandum. See "Issues Arising Out of the Situation in the
Near East," July 29, 1958, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Vol. XII
("Near East Region; Iraq; Iran; Arabian Peninsula"), Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1 993, pp. 1 1 4-1 24 at p. 1 1 9 (the exact words are: "if we choose to
combat radical Arab nationalism and to hold Persian Gulf oil by force if necessary, a
logical corollary would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-West power left in the
Near East").
The Memorandum identifying Arab nationalism as "inimical to Western interests" is
N.S.C. [National Security Council Memorandum] 5801/1 , "Statement By The National
Security Council Of Long-Range U.S. Policy Toward The Near East," January 24, 1958,
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Vol. XII ("Near East Region; Iraq;
Iran; Arabian Peninsula"), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993, pp. 17-
32. An excerpt (pp. 1 8, 20-22, 31 ):
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 17
The Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance to the Free
World. The area contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world and
essential facilities for the transit of military forces and Free World commerce. . . . The
strategic resources are of such importance to the Free World, particularly Western
Europe, that it is in the security interest of the United States to make every effort to
insure that these resources will be available and will be used for strengthening the
Free World. . . .
Current conditions of and political trends in the Near East are inimical to Western
interests. In the eyes of the majority of Arabs the United States appears to be
opposed to the realization of the goals of Arab nationalism. They believe that the
United States is seeking to protect its interest in Near East oil by supporting the
status quo and opposing political or economic progress. . . . [T]he mystique of Arab
unity has become a basic element of Arab political thought. Our economic and
cultural interests in the area have led not unnaturally to close U.S. relations with
elements in the Arab world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of relations
with the West and the status quo in their countries. . . . These relations have
contributed to a widespread belief in the area that the United States desires to keep
the Arab world disunited and is committed to work with "reactionary" elements to that
end. The U.S.S.R., on the other hand, is not inhibited in proclaiming all-out support
for Arab unity and for the most extreme Arab nationalist aspirations, because it has
no stake in the economic or political status quo in the area. . . .
The area's indigenous institutions and religions lack vigor (partly as a result of the
impact of nearly 200 years of Western culture), and native resistance to Communism
per se has, therefore, been disappointing. Furthermore, Communist police-state
methods seem no worse than similar methods employed by Near East regimes,
including some of those supported by the United States. . . .
Where the United States and its friends seek a level of stability in the area to
permit peaceful economic and social progress, nationalist Arabs and the Soviets
need continuing chaos in order to pursue their separate aims. Many Arabs remain
unconvinced of their stake in the future of the Free World. They believe that our
concern over Near East petroleum as essential to the Western alliance, our desires
to create indigenous strength to resist Communist subversion or domination, our
efforts to maintain existing military transit and base rights and deny them to the
U.S.S.R., are a mere cover for a desire to divide and dominate the area. ... Of the
countries covered by this paper . . . [o]nly Israel would be capable of effective
delaying action against a military power. . . .
[The United States should] be prepared, when required, to come forward, as was
done in Iran [i.e. in a C.I.A. coup in 1953], with formulas designed to reconcile vital
Free World interests in the area's petroleum resources with the rising tide of
nationalism in the area.
See also, "Petroleum Policy of the United States," Memorandum of U.S.
Department of State, April 1 1 , 1944, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1944, Vol. V
("The Near East, South Asia, Africa, The Far East"), Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1 965, pp. 27-33. An excerpt (p. 30):
Furthermore, and of greater importance, United States policy should, in general, aim
to assure to this country, in the interest of security, a substantial and geographically
diversified holding of foreign petroleum resources in the hands of United States
nationals. This would involve the preservation of the absolute position presently
obtaining, and therefore vigilant protection of existing concessions in United States
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 18
hands coupled with insistence upon the Open Door principle of equal opportunity for
United States companies in new areas.
For commentary about the Third World in general in declassified U.S. government
documents, see chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnote 52; and chapter 5 of U.P. and its
footnote 32. See also chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 14.
43. On U.S. planners' recognition of a tripartite system in the Middle East, see for
example, Senator Henry Jackson [the Senate's ranking oil expert], Congressional
Record, May 21 , 1 973. An excerpt (pp. 1 6264-1 6265):
Mr. President, such stability as now obtains in the Middle East is, in my view,
largely the result of the strength and Western orientation of Israel on the
Mediterranean and Iran on the Persian Gulf. These two countries, reliable friends of
the United States, together with Saudi Arabia, have served to inhibit and contain
those irresponsible and radical elements in certain Arab States -- such as Syria,
Libya, Lebanon, and Iraq -- who, were they free to do so, would pose a grave threat
indeed to our principal sources of petroleum in the Persian Gulf. Among the many
anomalies of the Middle East must surely be counted the extent to which Saudi
Arabia and the sheikhdoms -- from which, along with Iran, most of our imported oil will
flow in the years ahead [i.e. until 1968 the Western Hemisphere was the major global
oil producer] -- will depend for regional stability on the ability of Israel to help provide
an environment in which moderate regimes in Lebanon and Jordan can survive and
in which Syria can be contained. Iran, without whose protective weight Kuwait would
almost certainly fall to Iraq, plays a similar and even more direct role in the gulf itself. .
The fact is, of course, that the principal threat to the oil producing countries of the
Middle East and Persian Gulf is not Israel, but, rather, the have-not Arab States: Iraq,
Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. These Arab States, impoverished as they are and plagued
by the most severe developmental problems, view the great riches of the oil
producing states as a potential solution to their economic development problems.
Report of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (Henry M. Jackson,
Chairman), Access to Oil -- The United States Relationships with Saudi Arabia and Iran,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977 (Publication No. 95-70).
See also, Israel Shahak, "How Israel's strategy favours Iraq over Iran," Middle East
International, March 19, 1993, p. 19. An excerpt:
In a remarkably forthright article in Yediot Aharonot in April 1992, [former
commander of Israeli military intelligence General (reserve) Shlomo] Gazit lays bare
the more decisive and lasting aspects of Israel's traditional role as a strategic asset
for the West, especially after the demise of the U.S.S.R.[:]
"Israel's main task has not changed at all, and it remains of crucial importance.
Its location at the center of the Arab-Muslim Middle East predestines Israel to be a
devoted guardian of stability in all the countries surrounding it. Its [role] is to protect
the existing regimes: to prevent or halt the processes of radicalization and to block
the expansion of fundamentalist religious zealotry. . . ."
In Gazit's view, Israel thus performs a vital service in guaranteeing regional
stability. Without Israel, the West would have to perform this role by itself.
On Israel and Iran being tacit allies, see for example, Uri Lubrani [Israeli
Ambassador to Iran from 1 973 to 1 978], "Allon in the Palace of the Shah," Da var (Israel),
April 20, 1980 (Independence Day Supplement)(reporting that "the entire upper echelon
of the Israeli political leadership" visited Iran, including David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir,
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 19
Abba Eban, Yitzhak Rabin, Yigal Allon, Moshe Dayan, and Menahem Begin)(title and
quotation are Chomsky's own translations); Richard T. Sale, "S.A.V.A.K.: A Feared and
Pervasive Force," Washington Post, May 9, 1977, p. A1 ("Innumerable Iranians,
including many in a position to know, told me that the Israelis oversee SAVAK's [Iranian
secret police] techniques"). See also footnote 16 of chapter 1 of U.P.
44. On Israel as a U.S. mercenary state, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 1 1
and 16.
45. On U.S. aid to Israel, see for example, Donald Neff, "Massive aid to Israel,"
Middle East International, July 21 , 1 995, p. 8. An excerpt:
For the past decade, Israel has been receiving annually, as non-repayable
grants, $3bn and, for keeping its peace with Israel, Egypt has been getting $2.2bn.
Through special deals, grants from other programmes and loan guarantees, Israel's
total contribution from the U.S. came to $6,321 ,000,000 in fiscal 1993 Israel's aid
includes $1 .2bn in economic assistance (the rest goes to military transfers). The
economic aid goes directly into Israel's budget without any pretense of being targeted
for specific projects, as in other countries. In other words, Israel gets a direct boost
to its treasury of $1.2bn every year as though its own taxpayers had paid it. Yet
Israel's economy is in its best shape ever . . . and Israelis are enjoying a lifestyle far
beyond that of most people of the world. . . . Congress has never bothered asking
why a country this prosperous needs continued economic assistance, whose
purpose is to help develop struggling economies, not augment ones already well
developed. . . .
The magnitude of aid to Israel becomes starker when it is realised that Israel's
population of around 5 million is only a thousandth of the world total of 5.5 billion
people. This small number is getting about a quarter of all the money the U.S. is
spending worldwide on foreign aid -- not counting the additional $3.3bn Israel
receives by other means from the U.S. or the $2.2bn the U.S. pays annually to Egypt
for keeping peace with Israel.
See also, Robert Gibson, '"Unique Situation'; Israel: An Economic Ward of U.S.," Los
Angeles Times, July 20, 1 987, part 1 , p. 1 ("No parallel exists in the history of
international capital flow").
On total U.S. foreign aid, see footnote 28 of chapter 10 of U.P.
46. On U.S. moves to block a political settlement in the Middle East before 1 994,
see footnotes 41 , 47, 48, 49 and 56 of this chapter. On the Oslo Agreements as an
outright imposition of U.S. and Israeli will, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 111; and
the text of chapter 8 of U.P.
47. On Sadat's 1 971 offer and its rejection, see for example, John Norton Moore,
ed., The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974, Vol. 3, pp.
1 1 06-1 1 25, especially pp. 1 1 07, 1 1 1 (reproducing the documents). Offered through
U.N. mediator Gunnar Jarring, the text of the 1 971 plan accepted by Sadat included
"respect for and acknowledgment of . . . [Israel's] sovereignty, territorial integrity and
political independence," and Israelis' "right to live in peace within secure and recognized
boundaries"; there was no mention of a Palestinian state. The Israeli government
welcomed the plan as a genuine offer of "a peace agreement," but stated that "Israel will
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 20
not withdraw to the pre-June 5, 1 967 lines" -- thus rejecting it, and effectively terminating
the initiative.
For acknowledgments in Israel of the offer, see for example, Editorial, Ha'aretz
(Israel), October 8, 1 981 ("Sadat was the first Arab leader who, a year after coming to
power, declared his willingness to make peace with Israel in his famous reply to Dr.
Jarring's memorandum")(quotation is Chomsky's own translation); Mordechai Gur,
Ma 'ariv{ Israel), October 1 1 , 1981 ("In February 1971 [Sadat] said that he was prepared
to make peace with lsrael")(quotation is Chomsky's own translation); Yitzhak Rabin, The
Rabin Memoirs, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 (expanded edition;
original 1 979), p. 1 92. In these memoirs, Rabin describes Sadat's acceptance of the
"famous" Jarring proposal as a "milestone" on the path to peace, the proposal having
been a "bombshell." In contrast, in the U.S., the facts have disappeared -- see footnote
49 of this chapter. For an acknowledgment by Kissinger of Egyptian willingness to enter
a peace agreement, see footnote 41 of this chapter.
48. On the 1976 offer at the U.N. Security Council and its rejection, see for
example, Kathleen Teltsch, "U.S. Casts Veto On Mideast Plan In U.N.'s Council," New
York Times, January 27, 1 976, pp. 1 , 4 (reproducing the text of the 1 976 Security
Council Resolution, which incorporated the wording of U.N. Resolution 242, but added a
provision for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; this proposal also was
supported by the P.L.O.); "Palestine Guerrillas Seek to Close Ranks for War," New York
Times, March 1 , 1 976, p. 4 (describing the U.S. veto of the 1 976 U.N. peace initiative as
a serious blow to Palestinian hopes for a negotiated settlement).
49. For examples of how rejected Arab peace offers have been eliminated from
history in the U.S., see Thomas L. Friedman, "Seeking Peace in Mideast," New York
Times, March 17, 1985, section 1 , p. 1 (chronologically listing U.S. and U.N. Security
Council proposals, but ignoring all of the Arab proposals prior to those that led to the
Camp David Accords of 1978); Eric Pace, "Anwar el-Sadat, the Daring Arab Pioneer of
Peace With Israel," New York Times, October 7, 1 981 , p. A1 (explicitly denying the
facts, and referring to Sadat's trip to Jerusalem in 1 977 as follows: "Reversing Egypt's
longstanding policy, [Sadat] proclaimed his willingness to accept Israel's existence as a
sovereign state"). See also, Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds., Blaming the
Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, London: Verso, 1 988.
For contemporaneous reports of other rejected peace offers by Arab states, see for
example, Bernard Gwertzman, "3 Key Arab Countries Link Signing Of Israel Treaty to
Overall Accord," New York Times, August 21 , 1 977, p. 1 . An excerpt:
Egypt, Syria and Jordan have informed the United States that they would sign
peace treaties with Israel as part of an overall Middle East settlement. In addition
Egypt and Jordan said they would consider a further American proposal that they
also take up diplomatic relations with Israel. . . .
If the P.L.O. accepts United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967,
which has been the basis for the negotiations, the United States -- but not Israel -- will
talk with the group. ... On the issue of the nature of peace the United States said
that a settlement should go beyond a mere end of the state of war to include a peace
treaty and normal ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including diplomatic
relations. On the question of the final borders, the United States said Israel should
withdraw in phases to secure and recognized borders -- as called for in Resolution
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 21
242 -- on the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian fronts, giving up the land captured in the
1967 war with minor modifications. On the Palestinian question, the United States
said there should be a Palestinian "entity" the form of which should eventually be
decided by self-determination of the Palestinians.
Peter Grose, "Only U.S. and Israel Are Opposed As U.N. Approves Geneva Talks," New
York Times, December 10, 1976, p. A4 (reporting that the U.S. and Israel alone voted
against an Egyptian proposal to convene a conference on the Middle East by March 1 ,
1977); Anna Safadi, "Fahmy names terms for M.E. settlement," Jerusalem Post,
November 15, 1976, p. 1 (outlining Egyptian Prime Minister Ismail Fahmy's November
1976 peace offer, with its four conditions for a Middle East peace settlement: "Israel's
withdrawal to the pre-1967 war frontiers; the establishment of a Palestinian state in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip; the ban of nuclear weapons in the region; and the inspection
of nuclear installations in the area -- specifically Israel's reactor in Dimona"). See also,
Donald Neff, "The differing interpretations of Resolution 242," Middle East International,
September 1 3, 1 991 , pp. 1 6-1 7 (noting that the secret State Department study of the
negotiations leading to U.N. 242, leaked to the U.S. journalist and Middle East historian
Neff, showed that the U.S. always shared the full Arab understanding of U.N. 242
requiring Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories seized in 1 967). And see
footnote 66 of this chapter.
For a list of U.S. vetoes of United Nations Security Council resolutions involving
Israel from 1967 to February 1986 (20 in 20 years), see "Documentation," American-
Arab Affairs, No. 32, Winter 1987-1988, pp. 144-145.
On the position of the Palestine Liberation Organization, see for example, Seth
Tillman, The United States in the Middle East: Interests and Obstacles, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1982. An excerpt (pp. 217-218):
The present leadership of the P.L.O. had been ready for five years, and remained
ready, said [Palestine National Council chairman Khalid] Fahoum, to open a dialogue
with the United States, and it accepted the West-Bank-Gaza state. ... In fact, said
Fahoum, the P.L.O. accepted all United Nations resolutions pertaining to the Middle
East adopted since 1947 and did so "without any reservations." "With open mind,"
Arafat added. . . .
Arafat spelled out the P.L.O.'s willingness to give de facto recognition to Israel
and to renounce violence against it even more explicitly in an interview with
Congressman Paul Findley of Illinois, the senior Republican on the House Middle
East Subcommittee, on November 25, 1978. . . . Arafat issued the following
statement: "The P.L.O. will accept an independent Palestinian state consisting of the
West Bank and Gaza, with connecting corridor, and in that circumstance will
renounce any and all violent means to enlarge the territory of that state. . . ." Arafat
promised too, "We will give de facto recognition to the State of Israel," and gave
assurance as well that "we would live at peace with all our neighbors. . . ." Findley
concluded that Arafat's pledges to him met the conditions for American negotiations
with the P.L.O. under the commitment made to Israel in September 1975 and that this
justified "immediate talks with the P.L.O."
"Palestinians Back Peace Parley Role," New York Times, March 21 , 1 977, pp. 1 , 5
(reporting that on March 20, 1977, the Palestinian National Council, the governing body
of the P.L.O., issued a declaration calling for the establishment of "an independent
national state" in Palestine, rather than a secular democratic state of Palestine, and
authorizing Palestinian attendance at an Arab-Israeli peace conference; Prime Minister
Rabin of Israel responded "that the only place the Israelis could meet the Palestinian
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 22
guerrillas was on the field of battle." The Rabin statement appeared under heading
"Rabin Comments on Decisions"); David Hirst, "P.L.O. reaches limit of moderation,"
Manchester Guardian Weekly (U.K.), August 7, 1977, p. 6 (reporting that the P.L.O.
leaked a "peace plan" in Beirut which stated that the famous Palestinian National
Covenant would not serve as the basis for relations between Israel and a Palestinian
state -- just as the founding principles of the World Zionist Organization were not
understood as the basis for interstate relations -- and that any evolution beyond a two-
state settlement "would be achieved by peaceful means"). In April and May of 1 984,
Arafat then made a series of statements in Europe and Asia calling for negotiations with
Israel leading to mutual recognition; a United Press International article on these
proposals was the featured front-page story in the San Francisco Examiner, and the
facts were reported without prominence in the local quality American press -- but the
U.S. national media suppressed the story outright, apart from a bare mention in the
Washington Post some weeks later; the New York Times did not publish a word. See
U.P.I., "Arafat wants Israel talks," San Francisco Examiner, May 5, 1 984, p. 1 . See also,
Editorial, "A welcome move by the P.L.O.," Christian Science Monitor, November 1 6,
1988, p. 15. An excerpt:
By accepting United Nations Resolution 242 as a basis for Mideast peace, the
Palestine Liberation Organization has taken a welcome step toward moderation. Its
legislative arm, the Palestine National Council, now endorses a "two state" solution to
the Arab-Israeli impasse.
The P.N.C., meeting in Algiers, has eased what had been a rock-bound
determination not to recognize Israel. The U.N. resolution specifies the right of every
state in the region, including (by implication) Israel, to live within secure boundaries. .
. . Under the Palestinian proposal, U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 (which implements
242) are to serve as a basis for an international peace conference, at which such
thorny issues as the borders of a new Palestinian state would be resolved.
Chomsky remarked about the P.L.O. long before the Oslo Agreements of 1 994
{Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, Boston: South End,
1983, updated edition 1999, p. 164):
Quite generally, the P.L.O. has the same sort of legitimacy that the Zionist movement
had in the pre-state period, a fact that is undoubtedly recognized at some level within
Israel and, I think, accounts for the bitter hatred of the P.L.O.
50. For Will's article, see George Will, "MidEast Truth and Falsehood," Newsweek,
August 2, 1 982, p. 68 ("Sadat, remembered as a peacemaker, first made war. . . .
Having failed to get to Jerusalem with Soviet tanks, Sadat went by Boeing 707"). On
Sadat's earlier rejected peace offer, see footnote 47 of this chapter.
51. For Newsweeks article, see "Middle East: Small Blessings," Newsweek,
February 8, 1971 , p. 36. An excerpt:
In part, the Egyptian position [in a memorandum to U.N. special Mideast mediator
Gunnar Jarring] echoed the U.N. resolution of November 1967, which called on Israel
to withdraw from territories occupied during the six-day war. In exchange, Cairo
promised to call an end to the state of war against Israel, respect Israel's territorial
integrity and agree that Israel should have free access to all international waterways.
. . . Security in the area could be guaranteed, the Egyptians added, by establishing
demilitarized zones on both the Arab and Israeli sides of the frontier, zones that could
be policed by a U.N. peace-keeping force made up, at least in part, of American,
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 23
Soviet, British and French troops. ("On no account," responded Mrs. Meir [the Israeli
Prime Minister], "will a force of that kind come in place of secure, recognized and
agreed borders.") . . .
[T]he Egyptian text specifically did not call for a Security Council meeting on the
Middle East, a move that Cairo had been threatening and Jerusalem had warned
would upset the Jarring applecart. Commented [Egyptian] Ambassador el-Zayyat:
"We want Jarring's mission to succeed."
52. On the ambassadors' warnings to Kissinger, see for example, Charles William
Maynes [Foreign Policy editor], "Military success breeds danger for Israel," Boston
Globe, June 15, 1982, p. 15. An excerpt:
In the early 1970s, a similar act of neglect resulted in historic damage to U.S.
interests. The Nixon administration sent a special envoy to a conference of U.S.
ambassadors in the Mideast to announce ... its belief that the region was not ripe for
progress in the peace process. Consequently, Washington was going to suspend its
efforts for awhile. To a man, the U.S. ambassadors replied that if the countries in the
Mideast concluded that the process itself had ended, there would be a disastrous
war. Several months later, Anwar Sadat moved Egyptian troops across the Suez
Canal to begin the Yom Kippur War.
See also, Matti Golan, The Secret Conversations of Henry Kissinger: Step-by-Step
Diplomacy in the Middle East, New York: Quadrangle/New York Times, 1 976, p. 1 45
(Kissinger recalled: "[Hafez] Ismail told me several times that the present situation could
not continue. He asked me whether the United States did not understand that if there
weren't some agreement then there would be war").
53. On the oil companies' warnings, see for example, U.S. Senate, Report to the
Committee on Foreign Relations by the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations,
Multinational Oil Corporations and U.S. Foreign Policy, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, January 2, 1975, Part III, Section VII, pp.
141-142.
54. On the intelligence view of the Arab armies, see for example, Norman G.
Finkelstein, Image And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso, 1995.
Some expressions of the general attitude (pp. 1 67-1 69):
Typically, General Ezer Weizman sneered "War, that's not for the Arabs."
General and Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi "diagnosed" that Arabs were congenitally
incapable of battle solidarity. . . . Two months before the October war, [Moshe]
Dayan lectured the Israeli army's general staff that "the weakness of the Arabs
arises from factors so deeply rooted that they cannot, in my view, be easily
overcome: the moral, technical and educational backwardness of their soldiers," and
that "the balance of forces is so much in our favor that it neutralizes the Arab
considerations and motives for the immediate renewal of hostilities. . . ."
[Abba] Eban derisively recalls the "official doctrine . . . that an Egyptian assault
would be drowned in a sea of blood, that the Arabs had no military option." He quotes
from an article by [Yitzhak] Rabin in July 1973 that "reads like an anthology of all the
misconceptions that were destined to explode a few weeks later": "Our present
defense lines give us a decisive advantage in the Arab-Israel balance of strength.
There is no need to mobilize our forces whenever we hear Arab threats. . . . The
Arabs have little capacity for coordinating their military and political action. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 24
Israel's military strength is sufficient to prevent the other side from gaining any
military objective." "An atmosphere of 'manifest destiny,' regarding the neighboring
people as 'lesser breeds without the law,'" Eban adds, "began to spread in the
national discourse. [Ze'ev] Schiff casually mentions that the Israeli soldier's
"nickname" for his opposite number in the Egyptian army was "monkey. . . ."
Crucially, Kissinger -- who effectively dictated U.S. policy, and thereby held a
veto over Israeli policy, in the Middle East -- shared the belief that "war was not an
Arab game." In a conversation with [Golda] Meir shortly after the war, Kissinger
reportedly recalled: "Do you remember what we all thought before the war? -- that we
never had it better, and therefore there was no hurry? We and you were both
convinced that the Arabs had no military option which required serious diplomatic
action. Instead of doing something we joked about the shoes the Egyptians left
behind in 1967." Told by an Egyptian diplomat that "if there weren't some agreement
then there would be war," Kissinger further rued, "in my heart I laughed and laughed.
A war? Egypt? I regarded it as empty talk, a boast empty of content."
Matti Golan, The Secret Conversations of Henry Kissinger: Step-by-Step Diplomacy in
the Middle East, New York: Quadrangle/New York Times, 1 976, pp. 1 44-1 47 (on
Kissinger's attitude).
55. For strategic analysts' recognitions about Camp David, see for example, Avner
Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security: Politics, Strategy, and the Israeli Experience in Lebanon,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. An excerpt (p. 70):
The Egyptian volte-face in 1977 was as momentous as the Egyptian decision in 1948
to join an Arab coalition in a military campaign against Israel. . . . [T]he Egyptian
defection was bound to have a critical effect. Israel would be freed of the need to
attend to an Egyptian front. Syria would become the mainstay of any future Arab
campaign. Syria could not be expected to rally the same broad coalition that Egypt
had so far led. The P.L.O. itself would lose much of its hard-won freedom of action
and become as uncomfortably dependent on Syria's good will as it had been in the
1960s. Israel would be free to sustain military operations against the P.L.O. in
Lebanon as well as settlement activity on the West Bank.
Harold H. Saunders, "Reconstituting the Arab-Israeli Peace Process," in William B.
Quandt, ed., The Middle East: Ten Years after Camp David, Washington: Brookings
Institution, 1988. An excerpt (p. 420):
[Ajlthough the Camp David Accords gave lip service to Palestinian interests, they
actually freed the Likud government in Israel to consolidate its hold on the West Bank
and Gaza. Evidence shows a major Israeli push to enlarge the program of
settlements in the West Bank from the period immediately after Camp David. ... In
the same vein, the Egyptian- Israeli peace freed Israel to invade Lebanon in 1982 to
destroy or drive out the P.L.O.
Hillel Schenker, "Interview -- David Shipler [New York Times Israel correspondent]: a
certain positive evolution," New Outlook: Middle East Monthly (Tel Aviv, Israel), May
1984, pp. 21-24. An excerpt (p. 23):
On the Israeli side, it seems to me that the peace treaty [agreed on at Camp David]
set up the situation for the war in Lebanon. With Egypt no longer a confrontation
state, Israel felt free to initiate a war in Lebanon, something it probably would not have
dared to do before the peace treaty. ... It is an irony that the war in Lebanon could
not have taken place without the peace treaty, and yet I think there would not have
been such tremendous opposition to the war among Israelis had it not been for this
same peace treaty.
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 25
Chomsky comments that Shipler wrote nothing of the sort in the Times during his five
years as its correspondent in Israel ending in June 1984, or since.
56. For Chomsky's recognition in 1 977 -- before the Camp David Accords were
signed in 1 978 -- of their obvious implications, see for example, "American Foreign
Policy in the Middle East," in Noam Chomsky, Towards A New Cold War: Essays on the
Current Crisis and How We Got There, New York: Pantheon, 1 982, ch. 1 1 (essay written
in 1 977). An excerpt (pp. 309-31 0):
Under Kissinger's initiative, the United States by late 1970 abandoned even a
rhetorical commitment to a political settlement and was clearly supporting a very
different program, namely, the Israeli program of developing and ultimately annexing
substantial parts of the occupied territories, a policy that led directly to the October
1973 war. . . . The October 1973 war led to . . . [the U.S.] effectively removing Egypt
from the military conflict, for the short term at least. . . . Previously, Sadat's efforts in
this direction had been rebuffed, but unexpected Arab successes in the October war
with their consequences within the Arab world led to a revision of American policy in
this regard. U.S. military assistance, far surpassing previous levels, reinforced
Israel's position as the dominant military power in the region. The Kissinger
settlement [removing Egypt from the military conflict] thus made it possible for Israel
to continue active pursuit of the policies just described, with tacit American support.
It is evident that these policies entail a continued state of military confrontation, and
quite probably, another major war.
57. For Beilin's book, see Yossi Beilin, Mechiro shel Ihud, Tel Aviv: Revivim, 1 985.
58. For use of the phrase "demographic problem," see for example, Yossi Melman
and Dan Raviv, "Expelling Palestinians: It Isn't a New Idea, and It Isn't Just Kahane's,"
Washington Post, February 7, 1 988, p. C1 . An excerpt:
Two weeks after the end of the Six-Day War in June 1967, the Israeli cabinet
convened for a secret meeting to consider a thorny issue: what to do about the
demographic problems created by the capture of the West Bank and Gaza, which
had added nearly a million Arabs to Israeli jurisdiction. One of the options discussed
at the 1967 cabinet meeting was resettlement of Arabs living in refugee camps,
according to the private diaries kept by Yaacov Herzog, who was at the time director-
general of the prime minister's office. . . .
The 1967 cabinet meeting didn't reach a decision on the resettlement issue. But
sentiment seemed to favor Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon's proposal that
Palestinian refugees be transported to the Sinai Desert and that Palestinians should
be persuaded to move abroad. According to Herzog's notes, Allon said: "We do not
do enough among the Arabs to encourage emigration."
Editorial, "The real demographic problem," Jerusalem Post, January 22, 1995, p. 6. An
excerpt:
[0]nce Judea and Samaria [i.e. the West Bank] come under the exclusive control
of the Palestinian Authority there will be no way of preventing massive infiltration into
Israel. This raises again the specter of the demographic problem.
Those who advocate Israeli withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and Gaza have
always used the demographic demon as one of their main arguments. It is one thing,
they would say, to rule over 800,000 Arabs in Israel. It is quite another to have
another 1 .5 million Arabs or more under Israeli rule. If they become Israeli citizens,
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 26
the country would soon have an Arab majority. ... To ignore what the influx of
hundreds of thousands of Arab "refugees" will do to both the Jewish character and
the democratic nature of Israel is to invite a nightmare.
Elliott Abrams, "A Place Among the Nations," National Review, July 1 9, 1 993, p. 58. An
excerpt:
Israel requires the return of millions of diaspora Jews from all over the world, [Likud
Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu] argues, to double its current population of about
five million. Ten million citizens, he believes, will provide a better economic and
military base and will prevent Arab numerical hegemony even if Israel keeps the
West Bank. "The key to Israel's future, the solution to its demographic problem, is
the continuing influx of Jews to Israel."
59. On the role of water in the conflict over the Occupied Territories, see for
example, Jehoshua Schwarz, "Water Resources in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza
Strip," in Daniel J. Elazar, ed., Judea, Samaria, and Gaza: Views on the Present and
Future, Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1982, pp. 81-100 (detailed analysis
of the technical aspects of the problem, including hydrogeology and salinity maps);
David R. Francis, "Economic Issues Are Key to Mideast Peace," Christian Science
Monitor, September 17, 1993, p. 9. An excerpt:
About 40 percent of all water consumed in Israel is tied to the territory taken in the
1967 Arab-Israeli conflict. That amounts to more than 600 million cubic meters a
year.
The largest part is diverted from the upper Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee.
Control of the Golan Heights and of southeast Lebanon, [Washington economic
analyst Thomas] Stauffer says, enables Israel to protect the system of canals,
pumps and pipelines which move Jordan River water through Israel as far as the
northern Negev desert. A second element is the acquifer underlying the West Bank.
The use of that water by Arabs is currently limited by Israel so the water can be
tapped by Israelis when it flows under the coastal plain of Israel itself, Stauffer says.
Israeli economists, he adds, estimate it would cost $1 billion or more each year to
replace with desalinated water those diverted water supplies if peace meant Israel
had to relinquish that water to residents upstream in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the
West Bank.
Julian Ozanne and David Gardner, "Middle East peace would be a mirage without water
deal," Financial Times (London), August 8, 1995, p. 3. An excerpt:
Like many Palestinians, the villagers of Artas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
have running water one day every two to three weeks. The spring water is polluted
by sewage and the men of the hillside village have to drive regularly to the fire station
in Bethlehem to fill up containers with water. . . .
Water has become one of the most sensitive and intractable problems in the
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations on extending Palestinian self-rule to the West
Bank and the division of the scarce resource between Arab and Jew throughout the
region evokes strong emotions. For decades Israel has drawn 80 per cent of the
670m cu. m. of water provided every year by the mountain aquifer, an underground
water basin located mainly under the West Bank. Israeli military occupation orders in
force since 1967, including a prohibition on drilling new wells, have prevented
Palestinians getting better access to the aquifer. The aquifer provides a third of
Israel's water consumption, 40 per cent of its drinking water and 50 per cent of its
agricultural water. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 27
Nothing symbolises the inequality of water consumption more than the fresh
green lawns, irrigated flower beds, blooming gardens and swimming pools of Jewish
settlements in the West Bank. Experts say the 1 20,000 settlers there consume at
least 60m cu. m. of water a year from the mountain aquifer, compared with the 137m
cu. m. allocated to the 1.5m West Bank Arabs. Some 69 per cent of the land
cultivated by settlers is irrigated compared with only 6 per cent of Palestinian land. . .
Israel also faces a battle over water rights in stalled negotiations with Syria,
aimed at a land-for-peace deal restoring the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to Syria.
Water from the Golan provides 30 per cent of Israel's drinking water.
Anthony Coon, Town Planning Under Military Occupation: An examination of the law
and practice of town planning in the occupied West Bank, Ramallah: Al-Haq, 1 992. An
excerpt (pp. 32-33):
Under Israeli occupation new deep wells have been bored and extensive irrigated
areas have been opened up [in the West Bank] but these are for exclusively Jewish
use. Four fifths of the underground water abstracted from the West Bank is used not
by Palestinians but by Jewish settlements or pumped into Israel. New Arab wells
have (with very few exceptions) not been allowed since the occupation, nor may
rates of extraction be increased, and many Arab wells especially in the Jordan Valley
have been confiscated.
Miriam R. Lowi, Water and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River
Basin, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Israeli-Palestinian Interim
Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, signed in Washington, September 28,
1995, Jerusalem: State of Israel, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Annex III, Appendix I, Article
40 and Schedule 1 (the Interim Oslo Agreement provided the first official Israeli data on
the allocation of the crucial water resources of the West Bank, in general confirming the
analyses already cited).
For another case of Israel taking the resources of territory it allegedly occupies for
"security," see "The great terrain robbery," Economist (London), November 14, 1998, p.
46. An excerpt:
A new interpretation of the land-for-peace principle has emerged from Israel. In
the self-declared "security zone" that it occupies in southern Lebanon, Israel seems
to have decided that if it cannot have peace, it will at least make sure that it has the
land. Since September, Israeli lorries have been scooping up truckload after
truckload of Lebanon's fertile topsoil and carting it off to Israel. The land has lain
fallow for years, cut off from its Lebanese owners by an Israeli security fence. So it
will make rich fertiliser for the Israeli terraces where it is now being spread, just
across the border.
So far, estimate the United Nations peacekeepers stationed nearby, the Israeli
lorries have made off with 75,000 cubic metres of soil. The Lebanese are left with an
ugly open-cast mine. ... At first, the Israelis denied everything. ... But after the
U.N. confirmed the story, first the Israeli army and then the government admitted the
theft.
On the more general system of institutions that have been established to ensure
that land use and development funds are reserved for only Jewish citizens and not
Arabs -- to which U.S. citizens may make tax -deductible contributions -- see for example,
Walter Lehn with Uri Davis, The Jewish National Fund, London: Kegan Paul, 1988; Ian
Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority, Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1 980; Ori Shohet, "No One Shall Grow Tomatoes . . .,"
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 28
Ha'aretz Supplement (Israel), September 25/27, 1985 [translated in News From Within
(Jerusalem), June 23, 1986](discussing the devices that ensure discrimination against
Arab citizens of Israel and Arabs in the Occupied Territories, and comparing Israeli laws
and South African apartheid; the title of the article refers to military regulations that
require West Bank Arabs to obtain a license to plant a fruit tree or vegetables, one of the
devices used to enable Israel to take over the lands there on grounds of inadequate
title); Eyal Ehrlich, Ha'aretz (Israel), November 1 3, 1 987 (noting that Arabs in the West
Bank are "facing a serious water crisis," resulting from a division of water resources
favoring Jewish settlers by 1 2 to 1 ; "the Arab inhabitants, naturally, are forbidden to dig
new wells")(quotations are Chomsky's own translation). See also, Israel Shahak,
Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, London: Pluto,
1 994, chs. 5 and 6. And see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 77 and 78.
60. For the November 1 947 U.N. recommendation on the partition of Palestine, see
General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), Concerning the Future Government of Palestine,
of November 29, 1947, in John Norton Moore, ed., The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Vol. Ill,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974, pp. 313-342. Chomsky remarks {Fateful
Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, Boston: South End, 1983,
updated edition 1999, pp. 92-93):
In later years, the indigenous Arab population rejected the idea, accepted as natural
in the West, that they had a moral obligation to sacrifice their land to compensate for
the crimes committed by Europeans against Jews. They perhaps wondered why a
more appropriate response would not have been to remove the population of Bavaria
[in Germany] and turn it into a Jewish state ~ or given the self-righteous moralizing
they hear from the United States, why the project could not have been carried out in
Massachusetts or New York. ... If someone were to take over your home, then
offer you a few rooms in a "fair compromise," you might not be overwhelmed by his
generosity, even if he were homeless, destitute, and persecuted. As for the
wretched survivors of Hitler's Holocaust themselves, it is likely that many ~ perhaps
most ~ would have chosen to come to the United States had the opportunity been
offered, but the Zionist movement, including American Zionists, preferred that they
settle in a Jewish state.
There is by now an ample literature on the shameful topic of U.S. responses to the
plight of Jews fleeing the Holocaust. See for example, Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist
Connection: What Price Israel?, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978 (on the unwillingness of
American Zionists to support plans for bringing European Jews to the United States in
1 942); Saul S. Friedman, No Haven for the Oppressed: United States Policy toward
Jewish Refugees, 1938-1945, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973; David S.
Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941, Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1973; Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of
American Apathy, New York: Random House, 1967.
61 . For the December 1 948 U.N. recommendation on refugees and the resolution
admitting Israel into the U.N. upon its agreement to accept that recommendation, see
General Assembly Resolution 1 94 (III) of December 11,1 948 (on the right of return of
Palestinian refugees), and General Assembly Resolution 273 (III) of May 1 1 , 1949
(admitting Israel into the United Nations, and noting Israel's stated agreement to comply
with Resolution 194 (III)), both in John Norton Moore, ed., The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Vol.
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 29
Ill, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974, pp. 373-376, 418-419. See also, Simha
Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: Pantheon, 1 987, pp. 21 4-
215,223-224.
62. On the extent of the Zionist-controlled territory and the number of Palestinian
refugees through May 1 948, see for example, David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive
Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, London: Faber and Faber, 1 977, pp.
123-143. An excerpt (pp. 136, 138-139, 142):
The rise of the State of Israel ~ in frontiers larger than those assigned to it under
the Partition Plan ~ and the flight of the native population was a cataclysm so deeply
distressing to the Arabs that to this day they call it, quite simply, al-nakba, the
Catastrophe. . . . Deir Yassin was, as Begin rightly claims, the most spectacular
single contribution to the Catastrophe. [Deir Yassin, an Arab town that had in fact
refused to be used as a base for operations against the Jewish Agency by the
foreign Arab volunteer force, was the site of a massacre of 250 innocent Arabs by
the Jewish terrorist groups Irgun and the Stern Gang in April 1 948.] In time, place
and method it demonstrates the absurdity of the subsequently constructed myth [that
Arab leaders had called on the Palestinian refugees to flee]. The British insisted on
retaining juridical control of the country until the termination of their Mandate on 15
May; it was not until they left that the regular Arab armies contemplated coming in.
But not only did Deir Yassin take place more than five weeks before that critical date,
it also took place outside the area assigned to the Jewish State. It was in no sense a
retaliatory action. . . .
In reality, Deir Yassin was an integral part of Plan Dalet, the master-plan for the
seizure of most or all of Palestine. . . . Nothing was officially disclosed about Plan
Dalet . . . although Bengurion was certainly alluding to it in an address [on April 7,
1948] to the Zionist Executive: "Let us resolve not to be content with merely
defensive tactics, but at the right moment to attack all along the line and not just
within the confines of the Jewish State and the borders of Palestine, but to seek out
and crush the enemy where-ever he may be. . . ." According to Qurvot {Battles) of
1948, a detailed history of the Haganah and the Palmach [the Zionist fighting forces],
the aim of Plan Dalet was "control of the area given to us by the U.N. in addition to
areas occupied by us which were outside these borders and the setting up of forces
to counter the possible invasion of Arab armies." It was also designed to "cleanse"
such areas of their Arab inhabitants. . . .
When the war ended, in early 1949, the Zionists, allotted 57 per cent of Palestine
under the Partition Plan, had occupied 77 per cent of the country. Of the 1 ,300,000
Arab inhabitants, they had displaced nearly 900,000.
Benny Morris, "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: the Israel
Defence Forces Intelligence Branch Analysis of June 1948," Middle Eastern Studies
(London), January 1986, pp. 5-19. An excerpt (pp. 5, 6-7, 9-10, 14, 18):
A great deal of fresh light is shed on the multiple and variegated causation of the
Arab exodus in a document which has recently surfaced, entitled "The Emigration of
the Arabs of Palestine in the Period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948 " Dated 30 June 1948, it
was produced by the Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Branch during the first
weeks of the First Truce (11 June-9 July) of the 1948 war. . . . Rather than
suggesting Israeli blamelessness in the creation of the refugee problem, the
Intelligence Branch assessment is written in blunt factual and analytical terms and, if
anything, contains more than a hint of "advice" as to how to precipitate further
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 30
Palestinian flight by indirect methods, without having recourse to direct politically and
morally embarrassing expulsion orders. . . .
On the eve of the U.N. Partition Plan Resolution of 29 November 1947, according
to the report, there were 21 9 Arab villages and four Arab, or partly Arab, towns in the
areas earmarked for Jewish statehood -- with a total Arab population of 342,000. By
1 June, 1 80 of these villages and towns had been evacuated, with 239,000 Arabs
fleeing the areas of the Jewish state. A further 152,000 Arabs, from 70 villages and
three towns (Jaffa, Jenin and Acre), had fled their homes in the areas earmarked for
Palestinian Arab statehood in the Partition Resolution, and from the Jerusalem area.
By 1 June, therefore, according to the report, the refugee total was 391 ,000, give or
take about 10-15 per cent. Another 103,000 Arabs (60,000 of them Negev beduin
and 5,000 Haifa residents) had remained in their homes in the areas originally
earmarked for Jewish statehood. (This figure excludes the Arabs who stayed on in
Jaffa and Acre, towns occupied by Jewish forces but lying outside the 1 947 partition
boundaries of the Jewish state.) . . . [The report] stress[es] that "without doubt,
hostile [Haganah/lsrael Defense Force] operations were the main cause of the
movement of population. . . ."
Altogether, the report states, Jewish -- meaning Haganah/I.D.F., I.Z.L. and L.H.I. -
- military operations . . . accounted for 70 per cent of the Arab exodus from Palestine.
. . . [T]here is no reason to cast doubt on the integrity of I.D.F. Intelligence Branch in
the production of this analysis. The analysis was produced almost certainly only for
internal, I.D.F. top brass consumption. . . . One must again emphasize that the report
and its significance pertain only up to 1 June 1948, by which time some 300,000-
400,000 Palestinians had left their homes. A similar number was to leave the Jewish-
held areas in the remaining months of the war.
The article also explains how this Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Branch report
"thoroughly undermines the traditional official Israeli 'explanation' of a mass flight
ordered or 'invited' by the Arab leadership for political-strategic reasons" (p. 1 7). See
also, Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949,
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Benny Morris, 1 948 And After:
Israel and the Palestinians, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Since Morris's early publications, he has noted that later declassified documents
have strengthened his conclusions. See Benny Morris, "Revisiting the Palestinian
exodus of 1948," in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine:
Rewriting the History of 1948, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001 , pp.
37-59. An excerpt (pp. 49, 38):
[T]he documentation that has come to light or been declassified during the past
ten years offers a great deal of additional information about the expulsions of 1948.
The departure of Arab communities from some sites, departures that were described
in The Birth as due to fear or I.D.F. [Israel Defense Force] military attack or were
simply unexplained, now appear to have been tinged if not characterized by Haganah
or I.D.F. expulsion orders and actions. . . . This means that the proportion of the
700,000 Arabs who took to the roads as a result of expulsions rather than as a result
of straightforward military attack or fear of attack, etc. is greater than indicated in The
Birth. Similarly, the new documentation has revealed atrocities that I had not been
aware of while writing The Birth. . . . These atrocities are important in understanding
the precipitation of various phases of the Arab exodus. . . .
Above all, let me reiterate, the refugee problem was caused by attacks by Jewish
forces on Arab villages and towns and by the inhabitants' fear of such attacks,
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 31
compounded by expulsions, atrocities, and rumors of atrocities -- and by the crucial
Israeli Cabinet decision in June 1 948 to bar a refugee return.
See also, Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, New York: Norton,
2000. An excerpt (p. 31):
Plan D, prepared by the Haganah chiefs in early March, was a major landmark in
the development of this offensive strategy. During the preceding month the
Palestinian irregulars, under the inspired leadership of Abdel Qader al-Husseini, cut
the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and started to gain the upper hand in
the fighting with the Haganah. After suffering several defeats at the hands of
Palestinian irregulars, the Haganah chiefs decided to seize the initiative and go on the
offensive. The aim of Plan D was to secure all the areas allocated to the Jewish
state under the U.N. partition resolution as well as Jewish settlements outside these
areas and corridors leading to them, so as to provide a solid and continuous basis for
Jewish sovereignty. The novelty and audacity of the plan lay in the orders to capture
Arab villages and cities, something the Haganah had never attempted before.
Although the wording of Plan D was vague, its objective was to clear the interior of
the country of hostile and potentially hostile Arab elements, and in this sense it
provided a warrant for expelling civilians. By implementing Plan D in April and May,
the Haganah thus directly and decisively contributed to the birth of the Palestinian
refugee problem. . . .
Plan D was not a political blueprint for the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs: it was a
military plan with military and territorial objectives. However, by ordering the capture
of Arab cities and the destruction of villages, it both permitted and justified the forcible
expulsion of Arab civilians. By the end of 1948 the number of Palestinian refugees
had swollen to around 700,000. But the first and largest wave of refugees occurred
before the official outbreak of hostilities on 1 5 May.
Nan Pappe, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-51, London: I.B. Tauris, 1992,
chs. 2 and 3, especially pp. 76-99. An excerpt (pp. 85, 96):
The Jews moved from defense to an offensive, once Plan D was adopted. The plan,
inter alia, aimed at extending Jewish rule in Palestine. . . . [Fjrom 1 April 1948 to the
end of the war, Jewish operations were guided by the desire to occupy the greatest
possible portion of Palestine. ... By 15 May 1948, about 380,000 Palestinians had
become refugees. By the end of the war the number was doubled and the U.N.
report spoke of 750,000 refugees.
Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: Pantheon, 1 987, pp.
81 -1 1 8. An excerpt (pp. 42, 83-84, 1 32):
In April 1948, forces of the Irgun penetrated deep into Jaffa, which was outside
the borders of the proposed Jewish state. . . . Ben-Gurion, despite harsh
pronouncements against the dissidents [i.e. the Irgun and other terrorist squads],
waited until after the establishment of the state to force them to disband. He could
have done this earlier had it suited his purposes, but clearly it did not. The terrorists
were very successful in extending the war into areas not officially allocated to the
Jews. . . .
Between 600,000 and 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were evicted or fled from areas
that were allocated to the Jewish state or occupied by Jewish forces during the
fighting and later integrated de facto into Israel. During and after the exodus, every
effort was made ~ from the razing of villages to the promulgation of laws - to prevent
their return. . . . According to the partition plan, the Jewish state would have had well
over 300,000 Arabs, including 90,000 Bedouin. With the Jewish conquest of areas
designated for the Arab state (western Galilee, Nazareth, Jaffa, Lydda, Ramleh,
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 32
villages south of Jerusalem, and villages in the Arab Triangle of central Palestine),
the Arab population would have risen by another 300,000 or more. Zionist leaders
feared such numbers of non-Jews would threaten the stability of the new state both
militarily -- should they become a fifth column for Arab armies -- and socially -- insofar
as a substantial Muslim and Christian minority would challenge the new state's
Jewish character. Thus the flight of up to 700,000 Arabs from Palestinian villages
and towns during 1 948 came to many as a relief. . . .
It wasn't until April 30, 1948, two weeks before the end of the [British] Mandate,
that Arab chiefs of staff met for the first time to work out a plan for military
intervention. Under the pressure of mounting public criticism, fueled by the
increasingly desperate situation in Palestine -- the massacre of Dir Yassin, the fall of
Tiberias, the evacuation of Haifa, the collapse of the Palestinian forces, the failure of
the A.L.A. [Arab Liberation Army], and the mass flight of refugees -- the army chiefs
of the Arab states were finally compelled to discuss the deployment of their regular
armies.
Jon Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars: The Middle East, 1945-1952, New York: Da Capo,
1 976 (eyewitness report by a Zionist historian, also recounting the fact that well before
May 1 948 the Jewish guerrilla group Irgun and the Zionist military organization Haganah
had driven most of the Arab population from Jaffa and from large areas of the proposed
Palestinian state by force). An excerpt (pp. 226-227):
The battle of Mishmar Haemek [in the first half of April 1 948] was an obvious sign
of the turning tide, but the Jews were at the same time developing another tactic
which, as we now know, made a far greater impact on the Arab population of
Palestine. . . . Marching at night, they penetrated to Arab villages far in the heart of
Arab-held territory. Occasionally they blew up a house occupied by an active Arab
nationalist or by foreign Arab volunteers; in other villages they confiscated arms or
plastered the village with warning notices. The effects of such nightly visitations
soon made themselves felt throughout the Arab hinterland. They caused great
disturbances and started an exodus from the areas lying near to Jewish districts. . . .
Plans were now laid for a crucial attempt to seize the ports of Haifa and Jaffa, and
to open communications with the north by the occupation of Tiberias and Safed. On
April 21st I noted in my diary: "Arabs increasingly leaving Jewish state area. Almost
half have left Haifa. Villages in the coastal plains are being evacuated. Crowded
boats also leaving Jaffa" (a predominantly Arab city).
And see Benny Morris, "Operation Dani and the Palestinian Exodus from Lydda and
Ramie in 1 948," Middle East Journal, Winter 1 986, pp. 82-1 09 (on the expulsion of the
Arab populations of Lydda and Ramie in July 1948); Erskine Childers, "The Other
Exodus," in Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the
Palestine Problem Until 1948, Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987, pp.
795-803 (refuting as thoroughly baseless the claim that the Palestinian refugees fled on
orders from Arab leaders); Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New
York: Pantheon, 1 987, pp. 81 -1 1 8 at p. 85 ("recent publication of thousands of
documents in the state and Zionist archives, as well as Ben-Gurion's war diaries, shows
that there is no evidence to support Israeli claims" that Arab leaders called for the
exodus of Palestinian refugees. "In fact, the declassified material contradicts the 'order'
theory, for among these new sources are documents testifying to the considerable efforts
of the A.H.C. [Arab Higher Committee] and the Arab states to constrain the flight").
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 33
63. For the scholarship on the Arab states' reasons for intervening against Israel in
May 1948, see for example, Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for
Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
2001 , especially chs. 4 to 8; Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the
Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine, New York: Columbia University Press,
1988. An excerpt (p. 193):
It was not only popular clamour for intervention, however, but the knowledge that
Abdullah would intervene whatever happened that pushed the Arab governments,
with Syria at their head, to the brink of war. From a military point of view, the Syrians
had no illusions about their ability to handle the job alone. But from a political point of
view they continued to see Abdullah as their principal enemy and were impelled to
intervene, if only to prevent him from tipping the balance of power in the region
against them.
Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: Pantheon, 1 987, pp.
1 1 9-1 52. An excerpt (pp. 1 26, 1 28-1 29):
The overriding issue was the revival of the Hashemite plan for a United Arab
Kingdom in Greater Syria - ruled by the Hashemites, supported by the British, and
embracing Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and at least the Arab part of Palestine. . . . [T]he
Arab governments were aware of Abdallah's contacts with the Jewish Agency and of
his expansionist plans. They tried to persuade him to adopt instead a policy of
cooperation with the Arab League. These attempts were without success. For
Abdallah, the Greater Syria plan was not only a vision but a concrete political aim to
be realized through the efficiency of his own military forces, with British and Zionist
support. . . . Although Abdallah continued to be an active member of the Arab
League, his real relationships with the Arab states and with Israel became the very
opposite of the way they were represented. Officially Israel was the adversary, and
the Arab states were his allies. In practice, the roles were reversed. . . .
Philip C. Jessup, acting U.S. ambassador to the U.N. between 1947 and 1952,
cast light on the Syrian situation in a report to the secretary of state, in which he
concluded that "the real fear ... is not so much fear of Israel as reason [sic] of the
expansion of Transjordan and an increase in Abdallah's prestige in the light of his
former Greater Syria ideas. In other words, a fear that a settlement between Israel
and Abdallah would only be a stepping stone for the latter ~ his next step being
attempted expansion into Syria."
Itamar Rabinovitch [later Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.], The Road Not Taken: Early
Arab-Israeli Negotiations, New York: Oxford University Press, 1 991 , especially pp. 1 71 f;
llan Pappe, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-51, London: I.B. Tauris, 1992,
ch. 4; llan Pappe, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-51, London: Macmillan,
1 988; Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, New York: Norton, 2000, ch.
1 . See also footnotes 62 and 64 of this chapter.
64. On Abdullah's and the Zionists' plan to partition the area that was to have been
the Palestinian state, see for example, Yoram Peri, Between Battles and Ballots: Israeli
Military in Politics, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1983. An excerpt (pp.
58-59):
[Zionist leader Ben-Gurion had] reached a tacit understanding with King Abdullah of
Transjordan, which allowed the latter to move into the territories west of the River
Jordan, which had been allotted by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan to the Arab
Palestinian state. This would limit the war on at least one front, leading eventually to
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 34
peace; would absolve Israel from having to rule over about one million Arabs, and
would pave the way for Israel to join the Western bloc by colluding with Britain's
regional client, Transjordan. The crux of the arrangement was that Jerusalem,
intended to be internationalized by the Partition Plan, should be divided between
Israel and Transjordan. This plan was not revealed either to the Cabinet nor to the
military command.
Avi Shlaim, "Israel and the Arab coalition in 1948," in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim,
eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 2001 , pp. 79-103. An excerpt (pp. 82, 84):
King Abdullah of Transjordan was driven by a long-standing ambition to make
himself the master of Greater Syria which included, in addition to Transjordan, Syria,
Lebanon, and Palestine. King Faruq saw Abdullah's ambition as a direct threat to
Egypt's leadership in the Arab world. The rulers of Syria and Lebanon saw in King
Abdullah a threat to the independence of their countries and they also suspected him
of being in cahoots with the enemy. Each Arab state was moved by its own dynastic
or national interests. Arab rulers were as concerned with curbing each other as they
were in fighting the common enemy. Under these circumstances it was virtually
impossible to reach any real consensus on the means and ends of the Arab
intervention in Palestine. Consequently, far from confronting a single enemy with a
clear purpose and a clear plan of action, the Yishuv faced a loose coalition consisting
of the Arab League, independent Arab states, irregular Palestinian forces, and an
assortment of volunteers. The Arab coalition was one of the most divided,
disorganized, and ramshackle coalitions in the entire history of warfare. Separate
and conflicting national interests were hidden behind the figleaf of securing Palestine
for the Palestinians. The Palestine problem was the first major test of the Arab
League and the Arab League failed it miserably. The actions of the League were
taken ostensibly in support of the Palestinian claim for independence in the whole of
Palestine. But the League remained curiously unwilling to allow the Palestinians to
assume control over their own destiny. . . .
In 1947, as the conflict over Palestine entered the crucial stage, the contacts
between the Jewish side and King Abdullah intensified. Golda Meir of the Jewish
Agency had a secret meeting with Abdullah in Naharayim on 17 November 1947. At
this meeting they reached a preliminary agreement to coordinate their diplomatic and
military strategies, to forestall the mufti, and to endeavor to prevent the other Arab
states from intervening directly in Palestine. ... In return for Abdullah's promise not
to enter the area assigned by the U.N. to the Jewish state, the Jewish Agency
agreed to the annexation by Transjordan of most of the area earmarked for the Arab
state. Precise borders were not drawn and Jerusalem was not even discussed as
under the U.N. plan it was to remain a corpus separatum under international control.
Nor was the agreement ever put down in writing. The Jewish Agency tried to tie
Abdullah down to a written agreement but he was evasive. Yet, according to Yaacov
Shimoni, a senior official in the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, despite
Abdullah's evasions, the understanding with him was: "entirely clear in its general
spirit. We would agree to the conquest of the Arab part of Palestine by Abdullah. We
would not stand in his way. We would not help him, would not seize it and hand it
over to him. He would have to take it by his own means and stratagems but we
would not disturb him. He, for his part, would not prevent us from establishing the
state of Israel, from dividing the country, taking our share and establishing a state in
it."
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 35
See also, Nan Pappe, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-51, London: LB.
Tauris, 1 992, especially pp. 1 1 5-1 1 9, 1 31 ; Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis, New
York: Free Press, 1 986, pp. 11-15 (brief treatment of the covert relationship between
Abdullah and the Zionist leaders); Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, New
York: Barnes and Noble, 1979, pp. 334-337 (detailing the interactions between Abdullah
and the Zionists, including a Memorandum by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk
advocating the partition). And see footnote 67 of this chapter.
65. On Abdullah's plans for Syria and the Arab states' knowledge of them, see for
example, Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, New York: Barnes and Noble,
1979. An excerpt (pp. 331-332, 328):
[A Syrian report to the U.S. ambassador indicates that Syrian Foreign Minister
Barazi:] "said seemingly fantastic story, now widely believed here, that Abdullah has
made deal with the Jews 'not without foundation.' According story Haganah [the
Zionist military] will counter-invade Syria after crushing Syrian Army then return
quickly to Jewish Palestine as Abdullah rushes to rescue. Abdullah would receive
plaudits of grateful Syrian population and crown of Greater Syria. . . . Barazi added
Syria would not tolerate Abdullah with his royal airs and his black slaves. . . . [H]e
added 'We must invade, otherwise the people will kill us. . . ."'
[The U.S. representative at the U.N. noted that the] real reason for present Syrian
extremism is not so much fear of Israel as fear of the expansion of Transjordan and
increase in Abdullah's prestige in the light of his former Greater Syrian ideas. In other
words a fear that a settlement based on arrangements between Israel and Abdullah
would be only a stepping-stone for the latter, his next step being attempted expansion
into Syria.
Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the
Partition of Palestine, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, especially ch. 5 and
p. 193. An excerpt (p. 424):
The Zionist leaders, of course, were well aware of Abdullah's long-standing scheme
to make himself the ruler of Greater Syria. They knew about his family history, his
thwarted dynastic ambitions, and his longing to break out of Britain's tutelage. They
knew of his dream to make Damascus his capital and his feeling that Amman was no
substitute ~ a spring-board at best. Not only did they understand all this but they
also professed themselves to be sympathetic and supportive. No doubt Abdullah's
preoccupation with bringing Syria into his domain suited and was exploited by the
Zionists as a means of diverting him from the equally burning preoccupation with
bringing Palestine into his domain. Nevertheless, the Jewish Agency had always led
the amir of Transjordan to believe that it looked with favour on his ambition to conquer
Syria, and this was indeed one of the props of the unwritten alliance between the two
sides. The Agency did not pledge its active support for the realization of this
particular ambition, but it did promise not to stand in his way. An appeal by Abdullah
to Israel to lend him military support for the long-awaited march on Damascus was
therefore not as bizarre as it might seem at first sight.
Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: Pantheon, 1987. An
excerpt (pp. 151-152):
Even though the Arab Legion was a crack army, it had at most five thousand men
and no air force or heavy artillery. It could hardly be expected to defeat the fifty-
thousand-strong, well-trained, and well-equipped Haganah. What the Arab states
actually feared was that the implementation of Abdallah's secret agreement with
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 36
Israel would be the first step toward the creation of a Hashemite [Arab royal family]
kingdom extending over Syria and Lebanon. This fear explains not only Egypt's
intervention -- which was undertaken mainly to foil the plans of Abdallah and his
British backers -- but also the overall logic of its military operations. The best of the
units, nearly half of the invading force, did not attack Israel. They were sent to the
Arab cities of Beersheba, Hebron, and Jerusalem to prevent Abdallah's annexation of
these areas, which had been designated for the Palestinian state. The other forces
moved along the seacoast northward to Tel Aviv, also in the area designated by the
U.N. for the Palestinian state. . . .
Abdallah's first step after occupying Hebron and Bethlehem was to disband and
disarm the Palestinian fighting forces and the Egyptians who remained in the area.
One week after the signing of the Egyptian armistice, Israel was able to conquer Eilat
without firing a single shot.
Itamar Rabinovitch [later Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.], The Road Not Taken: Early
Arab-Israeli Negotiations, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 15-16; Nan
Pappe, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-51, London: LB. Tauris, 1992, pp.
114,121. See also footnote 63 of this chapter.
66. On Syria's and Egypt's 1949 peace offers, see for example, Itamar Rabinovich,
The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1 991 , chs. 3 and 5, especially pp. 1 08, 1 68-1 84 (asking whether Israel missed a
"historic opportunity" for peace when the Syrian proposal was rejected in 1 949, and
briefly describing the 1949 Egyptian proposal which would have created a Palestinian
state in the Negev desert and West Bank but would have let Israel keep other territory
that was not given to it under the 1 947 U.N. partition plan; also discussing Egypt's 1 948
overtures); Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: Pantheon,
1987, pp. 205-212.
67. For early acknowledgment of the agreement between Ben-Gurion and
Abdullah to partition Palestine, see for example, Jon and David Kimche, A Clash of
Destinies: The Arab-Jewish War and the Founding of the State of Israel, New York:
Praeger, 1 960. An excerpt (p. 60):
[l]n November 1947, Abdullah secretly received Mrs. Golda Myerson as the
representative of the Jewish Agency. They discussed the prospects of the
resolution to partition Palestine which was then before the United Nations. The King
told Mrs. Myerson that he would take over the Arab part of Palestine, for he would not
permit another Arab state to be set up; he would then conclude a treaty with the
Jewish State. Abdullah foresaw no exceptional difficulties in the way.
68. On the conflict between Allon and Ben-Gurion concerning the secret
agreement, see for example, Yoram Peri, Between Battles and Ballots: Israeli Military in
Politics, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1983. An excerpt (pp. 58-59):
Ben Gurion . . . had conceived a "grand plan" for the conduct of the war. He
reached a tacit understanding with King Abdullah of Transjordan, which allowed the
latter to move into the territories west of the River Jordan, which had been allotted by
the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan to the Arab Palestinian state. . . . This plan was not
revealed either to the Cabinet nor to the military command. The Haganah and
Palmach commanders opposed a limited objective war on the eastern front; they
wished to conquer the West Bank territories. On this front, military logic sometimes
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 37
dictated actions that contradicted the political and diplomatic consideration in Ben
Gurion's grand plan. . . .
The incongruence between the battle situation and Ben Gurion's intentions was
most notably shown in October 1948, when, after the "Yoav" and "El Hahar"
operations, the I.D.F. [Israeli Defense Force] forces realized that these two strategic
successes . . . made feasible an expedition towards the Hebron mountains and even
to the Jericho valley. The Southern Commander, Allon, sought permission to launch
the expedition, but was prevented by Ben Gurion's refusal. . . . Allon, astonished at
Ben Gurion's decision, asked Yadin, the Head of Operations Branch, for the reason
and was told that it was a political decision, imposed by the Prime Minister.
Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the
Partition of Palestine, New York: Columbia University Press, 1 988. An excerpt (p. 332):
Ben-Gurion . . . veto[ed] Yigal Allon's plan to extend the gains made in the first stage
of Operation Yoav by sending a force to capture or at least encircle Hebron and
advance towards Jerusalem from the south. That such an expedition was feasible
from a military point of view, no one doubted. . . . [T]he only conceivable reason for
the veto of an exceptionally promising military plan is that there were overriding
political considerations.
69. Ben-Gurion's view of the extent of "Zionist aspiration" and his proposals about
Southern Lebanon appear in numerous sources. For example, in his memoirs, Ben-
Gurion expressed his support for a 1937 British proposal to partition Palestine,
explaining:
The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Trans- Jordan; one does
not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the
boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of
the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.
Quoted in Simha Flapan, "The P.L.O.: A Step Backwards or Forwards," New Outlook:
Middle East Monthly (Tel Aviv, Israel), April/May 1977, pp. 2-3.
Similarly, Ben-Gurion's biographer notes that Ben-Gurion wrote to his son that:
A partial Jewish state is not the end, but only the beginning. ... I am certain that we
will not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual
agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. Our ability to penetrate
the country will increase if there is a state. Our strength vis-a-vis the Arabs will
increase. I am not in favor of war . . . [but if] the Arabs behave in keeping with [their]
nationalist feelings and say to us: Better that the Negev remain barren than that Jews
settle there, then we shall have to speak to them in a different language. But we shall
only have another language if we have a state.
See Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography, New York: Adama [the centennial
edition], 1 978, pp. 91 -92 (emphasis in original). Later, in May 1 948, quite confident of
Israel's military superiority -- contrary to the common "David and Goliath" legend -- Ben-
Gurion presented the following strategic aims to his General Staff (p. 1 66):
[W]e should prepare to go over to the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon,
Transjordan and Syria. . . . The weak point in the Arab coalition is Lebanon [for] the
Moslem regime is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be
established, with its southern border on the Litani river [within Lebanon]. We will
make an alliance with it. When we smash the [Arab] Legion's strength and bomb
Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares
to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo. . . . And in this fashion,
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 38
we will end the war and settle our forefathers' accounts with Egypt, Assyria, and
Aram.
The biographer also recounts the story of Ben-Gurion passing through the Jordan
Rift Valley in February 1 949, accompanied by a young general whom he admired.
Gazing at the Mountains of Edom beyond the Jordanian border, Ben-Gurion asked the
general: "How would you take those hills?" The general explained the route that he
would take and the forces he would employ, then he asked in astonishment: "Why do
you ask? Do you want to conquer those hills?" Ben-Gurion answered: "I? No. But you
will conquer them" (pp. 1 86-1 87).
Ben-Gurion also made similar statements to an aide at the Egyptian/Israeli
armistice talks in Rhodes in 1949:
Before the founding of the state, on the eve of its creation, our main interest was self-
defense. To a large extent, the creation of the state was an act of self-defense. . . .
Many think that we're still at the same stage. But now the issue at hand is conquest,
not self-defense. As for setting the borders - it's an open-ended matter. In the Bible
as well as in our history there are all kinds of definitions of the country's borders, so
there's no real limit. No border is absolute. If it's a desert ~ it could just as well be
the other side. If it's a sea, it could also be across the sea. The world has always
been this way. Only the terms have changed. If they should find a way of reaching
other stars, well then, perhaps the whole earth will no longer suffice.
See Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis, New York: Free Press, 1 986, p. 6.
In internal discussion in 1938, Ben-Gurion explained:
[A]fter we become a strong force, as the result of the creation of a state, we shall
abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine. . . . The state will only be a
stage in the realization of Zionism and its task is to prepare the ground for our
expansion into the whole of Palestine by a Jewish-Arab agreement.
See Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979,
pp. 265-266.
See also, Yigal Elam, '"Zionist Methods' In P.L.O. Policy," New Outlook: Middle
East Monthly (T "el Aviv, Israel), April/May 1977, pp. 14-16. An excerpt:
Zionism never gave up its "vision" of the whole Land of Israel. No Zionist leadership
ever admitted its abandonment of the Jewish people's right to any part of the
historical Israel. ("Who am I to cede any right of the Jewish people," Weizmann used
to say.) Even after the East Bank of the Jordan was severed from the area promised
by the British as a national home, the Zionist leadership continued to amuse itself with
ideas and even conducted negotiations for Jewish settlement in Trans-Jordan, Syria
and Mesopotamia.
For additional discussion and ample similar quotations from Ben-Gurion, see
Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: Pantheon, 1 987, pp.
1 3-53. See also, Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, New York:
Norton, 2000. An excerpt (p. 21):
Although Ben-Gurion accepted partition, he did not view the borders of the Peel
commission plan [a 1937 recommendation of a three-way partition of Palestine into a
Jewish state, an Arab state united with Transjordan, and districts under British
Mandate] as permanent. He saw no contradiction between accepting a Jewish state
in part of Palestine and hoping to expand the borders of this state to the whole Land
of Israel. The difference between him and the Revisionists was not that he was a
territorial minimalist while they were territorial maximalists but rather that he pursued
a gradualist strategy while they adhered to an all-or-nothing approach. . . . Both his
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 39
mind and his heart told Ben-Gurion, "Erect a Jewish State at once, even if it is not in
the whole land. The rest will come in the course of time. It must come."
Note that some other Zionist leaders did not even accept partition as a temporary plan.
For example, Menachem Begin declared (p. 25):
"The partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized. . . . Jerusalem was
and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel.
All of it. And for ever."
70. On Israel's nuclear capabilities, see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 70 and
73.
71 . For the U.N.'s partition recommendation, see General Assembly Resolution
1 81 (II), Concerning the Future Government of Palestine, of November 29, 1 947, in John
Norton Moore, ed., The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Vol. Ill, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1974, pp. 313-342 ("Plan of Partition with Economic Union").
72. On the genocidal population decline in the Americas following Columbus, see
for example, David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of
the New World, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, Appendix I. Stannard cites
population estimates for the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus of as high as
1 45 million, with approximately 1 8 million people in the region that now constitutes the
United States and Canada. He reports that even extremely cautious and conservative
demographers now concede that the total population of the Americas before 1492 was at
least 75 million, with 7 or 8 million people in the region north of what is now Mexico. An
excerpt (pp. 120-121):
Between the time of initial contact with the European invaders and the close of the
seventeenth century, most eastern Indian peoples had suffered near-annihilation
levels of destruction; typically, as in Virginia and New England, 95 percent or more of
their populations had been eradicated. But even then the carnage did not stop. One
recent study of population trends in the southeast, for instance, shows that east of
the Appalachians in Virginia the native population declined by 93 percent between
1685 and 1790 ~ that is, after it already had declined by about 95 percent during the
preceding century, which itself had followed upon the previous century's whirlwind of
massive destruction. . . .
As a result, when the eighteenth century was drawing to its close, less than 5000
native people remained alive in all of eastern Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
and Louisiana combined, while in Florida ~ which alone contained more than 700,000
Indians in 1520 - only 2000 survivors could be found. Overwhelmingly, these
disasters were the result of massively destructive epidemics and genocidal warfare,
while a small portion of the loss in numbers derived from forced expulsion from the
Indians' traditional homelands.
Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian
Legacy, New York: Knopf, 1 990. An excerpt (pp. 31 5-31 6):
[T]here is now a rough academic consensus, quite sharply at odds with figures
conventionally accepted earlier in this century, that the total number of Indians in the
New World at the time of the Discovery was between 60 and 120 million people.
(That compares to a population for Europe outside Russia of 60 to 70 million.)
Estimates for North America alone similarly range from about 40 to 56 million, the
bulk of which ~ perhaps 25 to 30 million - occupied the area of the Mesoamerican
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 40
state systems south of the Tropic of Cancer and 8 million more the islands of the
West Indies. That leaves from 7 to 18 million people north of Mexico, the majority of
whom were probably in the mixed horticultural-hunting belt in the Mississippi basin
and along the Atlantic coast to Maine.
Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of
Conquest, New York: Norton, 1975, pp. 22, 30 (the "ratio of 90 percent [native
population] decline within a century after European contact has been confirmed by other
researchers in Spanish America, where work in the field is advanced far beyond
anything yet done for the region north of the Rio Grande"; "a relatively conservative and
meticulously reasoned estimate . . . has calculated a total aboriginal population for the
western hemisphere within the range of 90 to 1 1 2 million" before European contact);
Michael A. Dorris, "Contemporary Native Americans," Daedalus, Spring 1981 , pp. 43-69
at p. 47 (citing figures that the Native American population was reduced from 1 2 to 1 5
million people north of the Rio Grande in 1 491 "to a low of 21 0,000 in the 1 91 census");
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present, New York:
HarperCollins, 1 980 (revised and updated edition 1 995), ch. 1 , at p. 1 6 ("The Indian
population of 1 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would
ultimately be reduced to less than a million"); Ronald Wright, Stolen Continents: The
Americas Through Indian Eyes Since 1492, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992 (on
genocidal population declines of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas in South America, and
Cherokee and Iroquois in North America).
On the nature of these population declines, see also, Francis Jennings, The
Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest, New York: Norton,
1975, ch. 13. An excerpt (pp. 164-165):
Virginia was not exceptional [in genocidal actions]. Puritan New England initiated
its own reign of terror with the massacres of the Pequot conquest. David
Pieterszoon de Vries has left us an unforgettable picture of how Dutch mercenaries
acted, under orders of New Netherland's Governor Willem Kieft, to terrorize Indians
into paying tribute.
"About midnight, I heard a great shrieking, and I ran to the ramparts of the fort,
and looked over to Pavonia. Saw nothing but firing, and heard the shrieks of the
Indians murdered in their sleep. . . . When it was day the soldiers returned to the fort,
having massacred or murdered eighty Indians, and considering they had done a deed
of Roman valour, in murdering so many in their sleep; where infants were torn from
their mother's breasts, and hacked to pieces in the presence of the parents, and the
pieces thrown into the fire and in the water, and other sucklings being bound to small
boards, and then cut, stuck, and pierced, and miserably massacred in a manner to
move a heart of stone. Some were thrown into the river, and when the fathers and
mothers endeavoured to save them, the soldiers would not let them come on land,
but made both parents and children drown - children from five to six years of age,
and also some old and decrepit persons. Many fled from this scene, and concealed
themselves in the neighbouring sedge, and when it was morning, came out to beg a
piece of bread, and to be permitted to warm themselves; but they were murdered in
cold blood and tossed into the water. Some came by our lands in the country with
their hands, some with their legs cut off, and some holding their entrails in their arms,
and others had such horrible cuts, and gashes, that worse than they were could
never happen."
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 41
Lenore Stiffarm with Phil Lane, "The Demography of Native North America," in Annette
Jaimes, ed., The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance,
Boston: South End, 1992. An excerpt (pp. 34-36):
By the mid-1 9th century, U.S. policymakers and military commanders were
stating - openly, frequently and in plain English ~ that their objective was no less
than the "complete extermination" of any native people who resisted being
dispossessed of their lands, subordinated to federal authority, and assimilated into
the colonizing culture. The country was as good as its word on the matter,
perpetrating literally hundreds of massacres of Indians by military and paramilitary
formations at points all over the West. A bare sampling of some of the worst must
include the 1854 massacre of perhaps 150 Lakotas at Blue River (Nebraska), the
1863 Bear River (Idaho) Massacre of some 500 Western Shoshones, the 1864 Sand
Creek (Colorado) Massacre of as many as 250 Cheyennes and Arapahoes, the 1 868
massacre of another 300 Cheyennes at the Washita River (Oklahoma), the 1875
massacre of about seventy-five Cheyennes along the Sappa Creek (Kansas), the
1878 massacre of still another 100 Cheyennes at Camp Robinson (Nebraska), and
the 1890 massacre of more than 300 Lakotas at Wounded Knee (South Dakota). . . .
Sherburn F. Cook has compiled an excruciatingly detailed chronology of the
actions of self-organized white "militias" in northern California, mostly along the Mad
and Eel Rivers, for the years 1 855-65. The standard technique was to surround an
Indian village (or "rancheria," as they are called by Californians) in the dead of night,
set it ablaze and, if possible, kill everyone inside. "Much of the killing in California and
southern Oregon Territory resulted, directly and indirectly, from the discovery of gold
in 1849 and the subsequent influx of miners and settlers. ... It was not uncommon
for small groups or villages to be attacked by immigrants . . . and virtually wiped out
overnight. . . ." Thornton has observed that, "Primarily because of the killings ~
which some scholars say had been . . . over 700,000 - [the population] decreased
almost by two-thirds in a single decade. ... By 1900, the combined native population
of California numbered only 15,377.
See also, Mark Cocker, Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of
Indigenous Peoples, New York: Grove, 1 998 (excellent overview focusing on case
studies of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico, the British extermination of the
Tasmanian Aborigines, the U.S. dispossession of the Apache, and the German
subjugation of the Herero and Nama in South West Africa); Hans Koning, Columbus: His
Enterprise -- Exploding the Myth, New York: Monthly Review, 1 991 (original
1976)(exceptional brief summary of the real history of Columbus's life and voyages);
Andree Collard, ed., Bartolome de las Casas, History of the Indies, New York: Harper
and Row, 1 971 (first-hand account, written at the time of Columbus by one of the very
few churchmen to protest the savage treatment of the local populations of the Americas
by the Spaniards).
For some further perspective on the ferocity of the European conquerors' war
methods, see Geoffrey Parker, "Europe and the Wider World, 1 500-1 700: The Military
Balance," in James Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1 991 , pp. 1 61 -1 95. An excerpt (pp. 1 94, 1 63-1 64):
Cortes conquered Mexico with perhaps 500 Spaniards; Pizarro overthrew the
Inca empire with less than 200; and the entire Portuguese empire from Nagasaki in
Japan to Sofala in southern Africa, was administered and defended by less than
10,000 Europeans. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 42
[T]he Narragansett Indians of New England strongly disapproved of the colonists'
way of making war. "It was too furious," one brave told an English captain in 1638,
"and [it] slays too many men." The captain did not deny it. The Indians, he
speculated, "might fight seven years and not kill seven men." Roger Williams, a
colonial governor, likewise admitted that the Indians' fighting "was farre lesse bloudy
and devouring than the cruell warres of Europe." Meanwhile, on the other side of the
world, the peoples of Indonesia were equally appalled by the all-destructive fury of
European warfare. The men of Java, for example, were "very loth to fight if they can
choose."
See also footnote 74 of this chapter; and chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnote 60.
73. On treaty violations against Native Americans, see for example, Charles
Joseph Kappler, ed., Indian Treaties, 1778-1883, New York: Interland, 1972
(reproducing the texts of 371 ratified treaties with Indian nations); Ward Churchill,
Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in
Contemporary North America, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1993, p. 46 ("Well before
the end of the nineteenth century, the United States stood in default on virtually every
treaty agreement it had made with native people"); Howard Zinn, A People's History of
the United States: 1 492-Present, New York: HarperCollins, 1980 (revised and updated
edition 1995), ch. 7; Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1940 (updated edition 1991)(on how the "Five Civilized Tribes" in what
became Oklahoma were deprived of their land and autonomy by the U.S. government).
See also, Vine DeLoria and Clifford M. Lytle, American Indians, American Justice,
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1 983, p. 34 ("treaties with Indians stand on the same
footing as those made with foreign nations").
74. On Hitler's use of the treatment of the Native Americans as a model, see for
example, John Toland, Adolf Hitler, New York: Doubleday, 1976. An excerpt (p. 702):
Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicability of genocide
owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He
admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild
West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination --
by starvation and uneven combat -- of the red savages who could not be tamed by
captivity.
Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973, p. 214 (Hitler's "continental
war of conquest" was modeled "with explicit reference to the United States"); Richard L.
Rubinstein, "Afterword: Genocide and Civilization," in Isidor Wallimann and Michael N.
Dobkowski, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass
Death, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1 987, p. 288 ("Hitler saw the settlement of the New
World and the concomitant elimination of North America's Indian population by white
European settlers as a model to be followed by Germany on the European continent").
Hitler's attitude was far from unique. Comparing the Arabs in Palestine to a dog in
a manger, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill remarked (Clive Ponting, Churchill,
London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. 254):
I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger, even though
he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit,
for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the
black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 43
by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or at any rate, a more worldly-
wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.
See also, Theodore Roosevelt [U.S. President, 1901-1909], The Winning of the West,
New York: Current Literature Publishing Company, 1905 (original 1889), Vol. IV. An
excerpt (pp. 54-56):
No other conquering and colonizing nation has ever treated the original savage
owners of the soil with such generosity as has the United States. ... It is indeed a
warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has
turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized nations. All
men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea
that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes,
whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that
of the wild beasts with whom they held joint ownership. . . .
Most fortunately, the hard, energetic, practical men who do the rough pioneer
work of civilization in barbarous lands, are not prone to false sentimentality. The
people who are, these stay-at-homes are too selfish and indolent, too lacking in
imagination, to understand the race-importance of the work which is done by their
pioneer brethren in wild and distant lands. . . . The most ultimately righteous of all
wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman.
The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind
under a debt to him. . . . [I]t is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and
Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners,
and become the heritage of the dominant world races.
Andrew Jackson [U.S. President, 1 829-1 837], "Indian Removal and the General Good,"
in Louis Filler and Allen Guttmann, eds., The Removal of the Cherokee Nation: Manifest
Destiny or National Dishonor?, Boston: Heath, 1962, pp. 49-52. President Jackson
stated in his "Second Annual Message" of December 6, 1830:
Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and
philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its
progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many
powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race
and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true
philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of
one generation to make room for another. . . . Nor is there anything in this which,
upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be
regretted. . . .
The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same
progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the countries
now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have melted away to make
room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the
westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of
the South and West by a fair exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to
send them to a land where their existence may be prolonged. . . . Rightly considered,
the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but
generous.
David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. An excerpt (p. 120):
[T]he surviving Indians later referred to [President George] Washington by the
nickname "Town Destroyer," for it was under his direct orders that at least 28 out of
30 Seneca towns from Lake Erie to the Mohawk River had been totally obliterated in
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 44
a period of less than five years, as had all the towns and villages of the Mohawk, the
Onondaga, and the Cayuga. As one of the Iroquois told Washington to his face in
1792: "to this day, when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn
pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers."
[President Thomas] Jefferson ... in 1 807 instructed his Secretary of War that
any Indians who resisted American expansion into their lands must be met with "the
hatchet." "And ... if ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe," he
wrote, "we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or is driven beyond the
Mississippi," continuing: "in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.
. . ." Indeed, Jefferson's writings on Indians are filled with the straightforward
assertion that the natives are to be given a simple choice -- to be "extirpate[d] from
the earth" or to remove themselves out of the Americans' way. Had these same
words been enunciated by a German leader in 1 939, and directed at European Jews,
they would be engraved in modern memory.
For a comparison of North America and Palestine, see Norman G. Finkelstein, The
Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1 996, pp. 1 04-1 21 .
75. For the German book, see Bruni Hofer, Heinz Dieterich, and Klaus Meyer, eds.,
Das Funfhundert-jahringe Reich, Medico International, 1990.
76. For Morison's statement, see Samuel Eliot Morison, Christopher Columbus,
Mariner, Boston: Little, Brown, 1955. The exact words (p. 129):
By 1508 a census showed 60,000 of the estimated 1492 population of 250,000 [on
Hispaniola] still alive, although the Bahamas and Cuba had been raided to obtain
more slaves. Fifty years later, not 500 remained. The cruel policy initiated by
Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.
The book's final paragraph states (pp. 198-199):
He had his faults and defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that
made him great - his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission
as Christ-bearer to lands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect,
poverty and discouragement. But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most
outstanding and essential of all his qualities - his seamanship.
One notable exception to the tradition in early scholarship on Native Americans that
is described in the text is the nineteenth-century writer Helen Hunt Jackson. See Helen
Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor: a Sketch of the United States Government's
Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1 995
(original 1880).
77. On the Mexican War, see for example, Howard Zinn, A People's History of the
United States: 1492-Present, New York: HarperCollins, 1980 (revised and updated
edition 1995), ch. 8.
78. For media depiction of Israel as having a unique moral quality, see for
example, Nat Hentoff, "The Compassionate Pilot and the Awkward Corpses," Village
Voice, September 14, 1982, p. 6. An excerpt:
From the start of the Jewish state, there has indeed been a tradition, tohar haneshek
("purity of arms" or "morality of arms"), in the Israeli armed forces. Until now [i.e.
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 45
Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982] Israeli soldiers had to be very, very careful
about injuring civilians, let alone killing them.
Editorial, "Israel and torture: A case for concern," Sunday Times (London), June 1 9,
1977, p. 16. Commenting on the paper's report on torture in Israel -- which is cited in
footnote 38 of this chapter -- the editors remark:
The subject merits such intensive treatment . . . because Israel occupies a special
place in our world. Israel itself has always made justice, the rule of law and the fair
treatment of Arabs central to its claim to nationhood. It was founded in idealism
following oppression and this is one of the emotional obstacles: few people are
prepared to believe that Israelis, as members of an ancient community which has for
centuries been victim of persecution, are capable of persecuting others.
Editorial, "Harshness, and Hope, in Israel," New York Times, February 19, 1988, p. A34.
This editorial notes: "As Israel suffers, so do its friends. What are they to think, and feel,
when this tiny nation, symbol of human decency, behaves unrecognizably?" The phrase
"as Israel suffers" in this case refers to the reported killing of 59 Palestinians, and
accusations of Israeli soldiers inflicting "bone-breaking beatings" and "burying four
young Palestinians alive with a bulldozer."
Understanding Power: Chapter Four Footnotes -- 46
Chapter Five
Ruling the World
1 . Adam Smith used the phrase "principal architects" in decrying the mercantile
system, which he argued benefited those who designed it at the expense of the vast
majority. See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1 976 (original 1 776). His exact words (Book IV, ch. VII, pt. Ill, pp. 1 80-1 81 ):
It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole
mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been
entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interest has been so carefully attended
to; and among this latter class our merchants and manufacturers have been by far
the principal architects. In the mercantile regulations, which have been taken notice
of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended
to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of
producers, has been sacrificed to it.
Smith's emphasis on the basic class conflict is evident throughout his work, though
this fact is grossly misrepresented and falsified by contemporary ideology. See for
example the following (Book I, ch. XI, p. 278; Book IV, ch. VII, pt. Ill, p. 1 33):
The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or
manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that
of the public. . . . The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which
comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and
ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only
with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an
order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who
have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who
accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. . . . [The
monopoly of Great Britain over its colonies], I have endeavoured to show, though a
very grievous tax upon the colonies, and though it may increase the revenue of a
particular order of men in Great Britain, diminishes instead of increasing that of the
great body of the people.
For more on Smith, see chapter 6 of U.P. and its footnote 10; and footnote 91 of chapter
10 of U.P. See also chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnote 58.
2. For more on anarchism, or libertarian socialism, see Peter Marshall, Demanding
the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, London: HarperCollins, 1992 (valuable survey of
anarchist thought and experiments, with detailed bibliography). See also the text of
chapter 6 of U.P. and its footnote 1 8; and chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 1 6.
3. On Lenin's and Trotsky's destruction of socialist initiatives in Russia and their
guiding philosophies, see chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnote 3; and footnote 21 of this
chapter.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 1
4. On Russia's Third World status prior to 191 7, see for example, Teodor Shanin,
Russia as a "Developing Society" - The Roots of Otherness: Russia's Turn of the
Century, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, Vol. 1 , pp. 103f, 123f, 187f. An
excerpt (pp. 103-104, 124):
In 1 900 the income per capita in Russia was three times lower than in Germany, four
times below the U.K., one-third lower than even the Balkans. Because of the
extreme diversity between the very rich and the very poor these average figures still
understate the poverty of Russia's poor. . . . Much poorer than Western Europe,
Russia was not actually "catching up" in terms of the aggregate income per capita,
productivity or consumption.
D.S. Mirsky, Russia: A Social History, London: Cresset/ New York: Century, 1952, p. 269
("by 1 914, Russia had gone a good part of the way toward becoming a semi-colonial
possession of European capital"); Z.A.B. Zeman, The Making and Breaking of
Communist Europe, Oxford: Blackwell, 1 991 , ch. 1 and pp. 57-58. On the history of
Eastern Europe as an underdeveloped region, see for example, John Feffer, Shock
Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions, Boston: South End, 1992, ch. 1.
On the East-West rift in the context of the Third World generally, see for example,
L.S. Stavrianos, Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age, New York: Morrow, 1 981 ,
chs. 3 and 1 6.
5. On comparative East and West European economic development in the
twentieth century, see for example, World Bank, World Development Report 1991: the
Challenge of Development, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 , p. 14. The World
Bank's statistics indicate that Eastern European per capita gross domestic product
compared to that of the O.E.C.D. (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, which is composed of the rich Western countries) declined from 64 to 57
percent between 1 830 and 1 91 3, then rose to 65 percent by 1 950; declined to 63
percent by 1 973; then fell to 56 percent by 1 989. The overall growth rate from 1 91 3 to
1 950 was higher for Eastern Europe than for the O.E.C.D. countries (1 .4 percent versus
1.1 percent), and higher from 1 950 to 1 989 for the O.E.C.D. countries than for Eastern
Europe (2.3 percent versus 2.0 percent). The Bank's statistics indicate that Eastern
Europe's per capita gross domestic product was 1 5.7 percent higher than Latin
America's in 1 91 3, but 77.6 percent higher by 1 989. Furthermore, none of these figures
take into account wealth distribution, which was far more skewed in both the O.E.C.D.
countries and Latin America than in Eastern Europe.
On the catastrophic economic decline in the former Soviet Empire after 1 989, see
footnote 1 of this chapter.
6. For the World Bank's assessment, see "The World Bank and Development: An
N.G.O. Critique and a World Bank Response," in Trocaire Development Review, Dublin:
Catholic Agency for World Development, 1 990, pp. 9-27. An excerpt (p. 21 , t9):
The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China have until recently been among
the most prominent examples of relatively successful countries that deliberately
turned away from the global economy. But their vast size made inward-looking
development more feasible than it would be for most countries, and even they
eventually decided to shift policies and take a more active part in the global economy.
Chomsky remarks {Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Boston: South End, 1993, pp.
73-74):
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 2
A more accurate rendition would be that their "vast size" made it possible for [the
Soviet Union and China] to withstand the refusal of the West to allow them to take
part in the global economy on terms other than traditional subordination, the "active
part in the global economy" dictated to the [Third World] in general by the world rulers.
See also, Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical
Perspective: A Book of Essays, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962, p. 150
(noting the Soviet Union's "approximate sixfold increase in the volume of industrial
output by the mid-1 950s"). And see footnotes 8 and 1 08 of this chapter.
7. Western planners' concern over Communism as a form of economic
independence is stated bluntly, for example, in an extensive 1955 study sponsored by
the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the National Planning Association, conducted by a
representative segment of the U.S. elite (including the Chairman of the Board of the
General American Investors Company, the Associate Director of the Ford Foundation,
the Dean of the Columbia Business School, and the Dean of Harvard's Graduate School
of Public Administration). See William Yandell Elliott, ed., The Political Economy of
American Foreign Policy: Its Concepts, Strategy, and Limits, New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1955. An excerpt (p. 42; emphasis added):
The Soviet threat is total -- military, political, economic and ideological. Four of its
specific aspects are important for an understanding of present and prospective
international economic problems. It has meant:
(1 ) A serious reduction of the potential resource base and market opportunities of
the West owing to the subtraction of the communist areas from the international
economy and their economic transformation in ways which reduce their willingness
and ability to complement the industrial economies of the West,
(2) A planned disruption of the free world economies by means of Soviet foreign
economic policy and subversive communist movements;
(3) A long-term challenge to the economic pre-eminence of the West arising from
the much higher current rates of economic growth (particularly of heavy industry) in
the Soviet system;
(4) A source of major insecurity in the international economy due to the fact that
Soviet communism threatens not merely the political and economic institutions of the
West but the continued existence of human freedom and humane society
everywhere.
See also footnotes 8, 32 and 1 08 of this chapter; and chapter 2 of U.P. and its
footnote 52.
8. On Western planners' fears of Soviet developmental success, see for example,
Record No. 55, June 12, 1956, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955-1957, Vol.
XXVI ("Central and Southeastern Europe"), Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1 992, p. 1 1 6. In June 1 956, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told German
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that "the economic danger from the Soviet Union was
perhaps greater than the military danger." The U.S.S.R. was "transforming itself rapidly .
. . into a modern and efficient industrial state," while Western Europe was still stagnating.
Similarly, after speaking to President Kennedy in 1961 , British Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan wrote in his diary that the Russians "have a buoyant economy and will
soon outmatch Capitalist society in the race for material wealth." See Richard Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1 993, p. 1 74 [citing
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 3
Alistair Home, Harold Macmillan, Volume II: 1957-1986, New York: Viking, 1989, p.
303].
Likewise, a State Department Report from the period warned:
[T]he U.S.S.R., like Dr. Johnson's lady preacher, has been able to do it all. We need
always reflect that for the less developed countries of Asia, the U.S.S.R.'s economic
achievement is a highly relevant one. That the U.S.S.R. was able to industrialize
rapidly, and as they see it from scratch is, despite any misgivings about the
Communist system, an encouraging fact to these nations.
See Dennis Merrill, Bread and the Ballot: the United States and India's Economic
Development, 1947-1963, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1992, p. 123.
A 1961 memorandum from President Kennedy's Special Assistant, Arthur
Schlesinger, explained with respect to Latin America:
The hemisphere['s] level of expectation continues to rise -- stimulated both by the
increase in conspicuous consumption and by the spread of the Castro idea of taking
matters into one's own hand. At the same time, as living standards begin to decline,
many people tend toward Communism both as an outlet for social resentment and as
a swift and sure technique for social modernization. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union
hovers in the wings, flourishing large development loans and presenting itself as the
model for achieving modernization in a single generation.
See "Report To The President On Latin American Mission," March 10, 1961 , Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. XII ("The American Republics"),
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996, Record No. 7, p. 13. See also
footnotes 7 and 1 08 of this chapter.
On U.S. Cold War policies, see for example, Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of
Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1992; Lynn Eden, "The End of U.S. Cold War History?,"
International Security, Vol. 18, No. 1, Summer 1993, pp. 174-207 (discussing Leffler's
study and the new consensus on the Cold War that it helped to establish among
diplomatic historians); Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign
Policy, 1945-1980, New York: Pantheon, 1 988 (with further citations to the internal
government planning record on U.S. Cold War policies); Frank Kofsky, Harry Truman
and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation, New York:
St. Martin's, 1993, Appendix A (showing that internal U.S. government estimates of
Soviet military capabilities and intentions after World War II were highly dismissive of
their capabilities, and were "virtually unanimous in concluding that the Soviets currently
had no wish to initiate hostilities with the West"). On the role of economic considerations
in the Cold War, see also chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnotes 3, 4 and 5; and chapter 3 of
U.P. and its footnotes 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 1 and 1 1 .
9. On profiteering from aid to the former Soviet Empire, see for example, John
Fialka, "Helping Ourselves: U.S. Aid to Russia Is Quite a Windfall -- For U.S.
Consultants," Wall Street Journal, February 24, 1994, p. A1. An excerpt:
The U.S. has pledged $5.8 billion in aid to the former Soviet Union, most of it
destined for Russia; there is dancing in the streets -- though not the streets of
Russia. The chief celebrants? Hordes of U.S. consultants who are gobbling up
much of the U.S. aid pie . . . pocketing between 50% and 90% of the money in a
given aid contract. . . .
Nowhere is the disappointment more acute than in the aid targeted for nuclear
disarmament -- a field where Russians have considerable unemployed expertise.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 4
There was much excitement in Russia when Washington unveiled a $1 .2 billion
program to help dismantle Russia's aging nuclear arsenal and re-employ its
scientists in civilian research. The Russians thought much of the money was coming
to them, but it hasn't. So far, the Pentagon, which runs the program, has contracted
for $754 million of U.S. goods and experts. Defense officials say it was Congress's
suggestion to use Americans where "feasible"; they have taken the admonition a step
further by making it a "guiding tenet."
Barry Newman, "Disappearing Act: West Pledged Billions of Aid to Poland -- Where Did
It All Go?," Wall Street Journal, February 23, 1 994, p. A1 . An excerpt:
Under conditions attached by donors, more than half the country's potential [aid]
credits must be spent on Western exports -- from corn to economists -- a practice
called "tied aid" long frowned on in the Third World. . . . Just as aid for Western
advice has mostly aided Western advisers, Western business has been the biggest
gainer from the West's business loans. Aid agencies have a pronounced preference
for safe bets. The money they are supposed to lend to inspire enterprise in the East
often goes to Westerners, or it goes nowhere at all.
Janine R. Wedel, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern
Europe, 1989-1998, New York: St. Martin's, 1 998.
See also, "While the Rich World Talks," Economist (London), July 10, 1993, p. 13
(U.K. edition). An excerpt:
To the man in the street aid is synonymous with charity, money doled out to
alleviate poverty abroad and guilt at home. But in the case of much of the aid rich
countries give to poorer ones, the main motive has not been to end poverty but to
serve the self-interest of the giver, by winning useful friends, supporting strategic
aims or promoting the donor's exports. One glaring example is that almost half of
America's aid budget over the past decade has been earmarked for Egypt and Israel.
Peace in the Middle East may be worth a lot to America, and to the world, but neither
Israel nor even Egypt is among the world's neediest countries. The cold war's end
has not yet made the motives of aid givers any less political. . . .
The richest 40% of the developing world's population still gets more than twice as
much aid per head as the poorest 40%. Countries that spend most on guns and
soldiers, rather than health and education, get the most aid per head. And about half
of all aid is still tied to the purchase of goods and services from the donor country.
This regular practice concerning Western "aid" money certainly is not new. See for
example, Tom Barry and Deb Preusch, The Soft War: The Uses and Abuses of U.S.
Economic Aid in Central America, New York: Grove, 1988, especially Part One (on the
role of U.S. economic aid as an interventionary tool in Central America, focusing
especially on U.S. A.I.D.); William Borden, The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign
Economic Policy and Japanese Trade Recovery, 1947-1955, Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1 984, pp. 1 82f (on the role of aid programs in East Asia).
For an early statement of the underlying policy by the Deputy Administrator for the
U.S. Agency for International Development, see House of Representatives, Hearings
Before the Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements of the
Committee on Foreign Affairs, Winning the Cold War: The U.S. Ideological Offensive,
Part VIII ("U.S. Government Agencies and Programs"), January 1 5 and 1 6, 1 964, 88th
Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964, pp. 954-
960 (Frank M. Coffin outlined the "Objectives of the U.S. A.I.D. Program" as being "not
development for the sake of sheer development," but the "fostering of a vigorous and
expanding private sector" in order "to open up the maximum opportunity for domestic
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 5
private initiative and enterprise and to insure that foreign private investment, particularly
from the United States, is welcomed and well treated"). See also footnote 14 of this
chapter; and footnote 28 of chapter 10 of U.P.
1 0. On some of the human costs of the capitalist "reforms" in Russia and Eastern
Europe, see for example, Stephen F. Cohen, "Why Call It Reform?," Nation, September
7, 1 998, p. 6. An excerpt:
Russia's underlying problem is an unprecedented, all-encompassing economic
catastrophe -- a peacetime economy that has been in a process of relentless
destruction for nearly seven years. [Gross Domestic Product] has fallen by at least
50 percent and according to one report by as much as 83 percent, capital investment
by 90 percent and, equally telling, meat and dairy livestock herds by 75 percent. . . .
So great is Russia's economic and thus social catastrophe that we must now
speak of another unprecedented development: the literal demodernization of a
twentieth-century country. When the infrastructures of production, technology,
science, transportation, heating and sewage disposal disintegrate; when tens of
millions of people do not receive earned salaries, some 75 percent of society lives
below or barely above the subsistence level and at least 15 million of them are
actually starving; when male life expectancy has plunged to 57 years, malnutrition
has become the norm among schoolchildren, once-eradicated diseases are again
becoming epidemics and basic welfare provisions are disappearing; when even
highly educated professionals must grow their own food in order to survive and well
over half the nation's economic transactions are barter ~ all this, and more, is
indisputable evidence of a tragic "transition" backward to a premodern era.
On the earlier U.N.I.C.E.F. report discussed in the text, see for example, Frances
Williams, "Unicef criticises economic reform's high human cost," Financial Times
(London), January 27, 1994, p. 2. An excerpt:
Economic and social reforms in central and eastern Europe have proved far more
costly in human terms than originally anticipated, with a massive rise in poverty and
widespread social disintegration, the United Nations Children's Fund says in a report
[Public Policy and Social Conditions] published yesterday. . . .
The report, which documents the impact of the economic slump on living
conditions in nine countries since 1989, points out that ... the spread of poverty,
surging death rates, plunging birth rates, falling school enrollment and an unstoppable
crime wave have reached "truly alarming proportions." "These costs are not only the
cause of unnecessary suffering and waste of human lives but also represent a
source of considerable instability and social conflict that could threaten the entire
reform process," Unicef argues. Crude death rates (for the population as a whole)
were up 9 per cent in Romania, 1 2 per cent in Bulgaria and 32 per cent in Russia.
Between 1 989 and 1 993 the yearly number of deaths in Russia rose by more than
500,000.
The New York Times's article on the topic -- a few months after this report from the
foreign press -- reviews some possible reasons for the growing death rate in Russia, but
with a curious omission: the economic "reforms" which the paper so strongly advocated.
See Michael Specter, "Climb in Russia's Death Rate Sets Off Population Implosion,"
New York Times, March 6, 1 994, section 1 , p. 1 .
See also, Victoria Graham, "UNICEF Says Health Crisis Threatens Eastern
European Reforms," A.P., October 6, 1 994 (Westlaw database # 1 994 WL
101 02786)("there were more than 800,000 avoidable deaths from 1 989 through 1 993 in
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 6
Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia
and Ukraine"); Julie Corwin, "Russia in Crisis: The Next Battle," U.S. News and World
Report, October 18, 1993, p. 47 (in June 1992, 43.2 percent of the Russian population
lived in poverty, compared to 2.5 percent from 1 975 to 1 980; per capita G.N. P. has
dropped to 65.4 percent of 1 990 level); Martin Wolf, "The Birth Pangs of a Capitalist
Eastern Europe," Financial Times (London), September 28, 1992, p. 5 (from early 1989
through mid-1 991 , according to International Monetary Fund and World Bank statistics,
industrial output fell by 45 percent and prices rose 40-fold in Poland; figures for the rest
of Eastern Europe were not much better); U.N.I.C.E.F., Public Policy and Social
Conditions: Central and Eastern Europe in Transition, Florence (Italy), November 1993;
Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist
Russia, New York: Norton, 2000. And see Eve Pell, "Capitalism Anyone?," San
Francisco Chronicle, August 21 , 1 994, p. 5/Z1 ("more Mercedes are sold [in Moscow]
than in New York").
For some examples of how Eastern Europe is being "reintegrated" into its
traditional Third World service role, see for example, Kevin Done, "A new car industry
set to rise in the east," Financial Times (London), September 24, 1 992, p. 23
(commenting that General Motors opened a $690 million assembly plant in the former
East Germany, where workers are willing to "work longer hours than their pampered
colleagues in western Germany," at 40 percent of the wage and with few benefits);
Anthony Robinson, "Green shoots in communism's ruins," Financial Times (London),
October 20, 1992, "Survey of World Car Industry" section, p. VII (wages in Poland are 10
percent of those demanded by West German workers, kept that way "thanks largely to
the Polish government's tougher policy on labour disputes"); Alice Amsden, "Beyond
Shock Therapy" [and related articles under the heading "After the Fall"], American
Prospect, Spring 1993, pp. 87f.
1 1 . For an article attributing votes for Communist Parties in the early 1 990s to
"nostalgia," see for example, Celestine Bohlen, "Nationalist Vote Toughens Russian
Foreign Policy," New York Times, January 25, 1994, p. A6 ("As the elections showed,
nostalgia for the old empire is a potent issue in Russia these days, with many Russians
disillusioned by what they see as a string of unfulfilled promises from the West").
For other reports on public opinion in the former Soviet Empire at the time, see for
example, "Poll finds most East Europeans have doubts about democracy," Chicago
Tribune, February 25, 1 993, p. 8 (a Gallup poll of ten East bloc countries found that 63
percent of those questioned opposed what's known as "democracy," an increase of 1
percent since 1 991 ); Andrew Hill, "Ex-Soviet citizens fear free market," Financial Times
(London), February 25, 1993, p. 2 (a European Community poll in February 1993 found
that most Russians, Belarussians, and Ukranians oppose the move to a free market and
feel that "life was better under the old communist system"); Steven Erlanger, "2 Years
After Coup Attempt, Yeltsin Warns of Another," New York Times, August 20, 1 993, p. A2
("Relatively reliable polls indicate that the number of Russians who believe that their
lives will be better under capitalism has dropped from 24 percent in 1 991 to 1 8 percent"
in 1993); "Order disguised as chaos," Economist (London), March 13, 1993, p. 4
("Surveys in nearly all [former Soviet bloc] countries show a swing back towards
socialist values, with 70% of the population saying the state should provide a place to
work, as well as a national health service, housing, education, and other services"). See
also chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 63.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 7
1 2. For Schoultz's study, see Lars Schoultz, "U.S. Foreign Policy and Human
Rights Violations in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Aid
Distributions," Comparative Politics, January 1981, pp. 149-170. An excerpt (pp. 155,
157):
The correlations between the absolute level of U.S. assistance to Latin America and
human rights violations by recipient governments are . . . uniformly positive, indicating
that aid has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which
torture their citizens. In addition, the correlations are relatively strong. . . . United
States aid tended to flow disproportionately to the hemisphere's relatively egregious
violators of fundamental human rights.
Furthermore, with regard to relative (i.e. per capita) -- as opposed to absolute (i.e.
per country) -- U.S. aid to Latin American countries and human rights violations by the
recipient governments, Schoultz also found (p. 162):
As in the case of absolute aid levels, these correlations are uniformly positive. Thus,
even when the remarkable diversity of population size among Latin American
countries is considered, the findings suggest that the United States has directed its
foreign assistance to governments which torture their citizens.
The study also demonstrates that this correlation cannot be attributed to a correlation
between aid and need.
See also, Lars Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin
America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 981 . And see footnote 1 4 of this
chapter.
1 3. On rising U.S. aid to Colombia and its human rights record, see for example,
Human Rights Watch/Americas Watch, State of War: Political Violence and
Counterinsurgency in Colombia, Human Rights Watch, December 1 993, at pp. 1 34, 1 31 .
In addition to documenting massive human rights abuses, this report notes that for fiscal
year 1994, the Clinton administration requested that military financing and training funds
for Colombia be increased by over 1 2 percent -- reaching about half of proposed military
aid for all of Latin America -- and indicated that if Congressional budget cuts for the
Pentagon interfered with these plans, it "intend[ed] to use emergency drawdown
authority to bolster the Colombia account." From 1 984 through 1 992, 6,844 Colombian
soldiers were trained under the U.S. International Military Education and Training
Program, over two thousand of them from 1 990 to 1 992 as atrocities were mounting.
See also, Human Rights Watch, War Without Quarter: Colombia and International
Humanitarian Law, New York: Human Rights Watch, 1998; Human Rights
Watch/Americas, Colombia's killer networks: The military-paramilitary partnership and
the United States, New York: Human Rights Watch, 1 996.
On the slaughter of dissidents in Colombia, see for example, Douglas Farah,
"Leftist Politician Killed in Colombia," Washington Post, March 23, 1990, p. A15 (the
Patriotic Union party had "lost some ground," "in part because so many of its local and
regional leaders were killed," including at least eighty in the first three months of 1 990
alone); James Brooke, "A Colombian Campaigns Amid Risks of Drug War," New York
Times, September 24, 1989, section 1 , p. 1 ("political violence is believed to have taken
the lives of 4,000 people in Colombia last year"); Amnesty International, Political
Violence in Colombia: Myth and reality, London: Amnesty International Publications,
March 1 994. An excerpt (pp. 1 , 3, 5, 1 6):
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 8
Since 1986, over 20,000 people have been killed for political reasons -- the
majority of them by the armed forces and their paramilitary proteges. . . . Perhaps the
most dramatic expression of political intolerance in recent years had been the
systematic elimination of the leadership of the left-wing coalition Patriotic Union
(U.P.). Over 1,500 of its leaders, members and supporters have been killed since
the party was created in 1985. Anyone who takes an active interest in defending
human rights, or investigating massacres, "disappearances" or torture, is in a similar
position. . . .
Colombia's backers, notably the United States of America, have also remained
silent when aid destined to combat drug-trafficking was diverted to finance counter-
insurgency operations and thence the killing of unarmed peasants. . . . [T]he
perception of drug-trafficking as the principal cause of political violence in Colombia is
a myth. . . . Statistics compiled by independent bodies and by the government itself
clearly show that by far the greatest number of political killings are the work of the
Colombian armed forces and the paramilitary groups they have created. ... In 1992
the Andean Commission of Jurists estimated that drug traffickers were responsible
for less than two per cent of non-combat politically motivated killings and
"disappearances"; some 20 per cent were attributed to guerrilla organizations and
over 70 per cent were believed to have been carried out by the security forces and
paramilitary groups.
The report also describes so-called "social cleansing" programs in Colombia (1 6,
18,23-24):
The murder of people designated "socially undesirable" ~ homosexuals,
prostitutes, minor drug peddlers, petty criminals and addicts, vagrants, street children
and the mentally disturbed - has become endemic in Colombia's major cities. These
killings are known as "social cleansing operations" and are generally attributed to, if
not claimed by, so-called "death squads" with fearsome names such as Terminator,
Kan Kil, Mano Negra, Los Magnificos, Cali Limpia. . . . [Sjeveral cases have
produced evidence that the "death squads" were drawn from the security forces,
particularly the National Police, and were often supported by local traders. . . . The
Catholic Church's Intercongregational Commission for Justice and Peace
documented over 1,900 "social cleansing" murders between 1988 and 1992, 500 of
them in 1992
The Council of State, Colombia's highest judicial administrative body . . . ordered
the Ministry of Defence to pay the equivalent of 500 grams of gold each to [one
victim's] parents. . . . The military attitude towards "social cleansing" was illustrated
by the Ministry of Defence's response to the compensation claim: " . . .[tjhere is no
case for the payment of any compensation by the nation, particularly for an individual
who was neither useful nor productive, either to society or to his family, but who was
a vagrant whose presence nobody in the town of Liborina wanted."
On the Colombian government's strikingly effective public relations campaign to
improve its image and justify continued massive U.S. aid, employing the P.R. firm
Sawyer/Miller, see John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For
You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Monroe, ME: Common
Courage, 1995, pp. 143-148 ("the firm devised a multi-stage campaign: first, reposition
Colombia in the public mind from villain to victim. Then, turn the victim into a hero, and
then a leader in the war on drugs").
14. For other studies confirming Lars Schoultz's findings, see for example, Michael
Klare and Cynthia Arnson, Supplying Repression, Washington: Institute for Policy
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 9
Studies, 1 981 , at p. 6 (study concluding that the United States provides "guns,
equipment, training, and technical support to the police and paramilitary forces most
directly involved in the torture, assassination, and abuse of civilian dissidents"); Edward
S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda, Boston: South
End, 1982, ch. 3 (showing that U.S. -controlled aid has been positively related to
investment climate and inversely related to the maintenance of a democratic order and
human rights); Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection
and Third World Fascism -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, Boston:
South End, 1979; Michael T. Klare and Cynthia Arnson, "Exporting Repression: U.S.
Support for Authoritarianism in Latin America," in Richard R. Fagen, ed., Capitalism and
the State in U.S.-Latin American Relations, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1 979,
pp. 138-168. See also, Teresa Hayet, Aid As Imperialism, New York: Penguin, 1971
(early work on the dominance of U.S. economic and political interests in the decision-
making processes of the international financial and lending agencies, including their
origination, funding, and staffing); Michael Tanzer, The Political Economy of
International Oil and the Underdeveloped Countries, Boston: Beacon, 1969, ch. 8
(same). For Schoultz's study, see footnote 1 2 of this chapter.
Chomsky clarifies that this correlation between U.S. aid and human rights
violations does not imply that the United States is rewarding some ruling group for
torture, death squads, destruction of unions, elimination of democratic institutions, etc.
Instead, he explains {Towards A New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How
We Got There, New York: Pantheon, 1982, pp. 206-207):
These are not a positive priority for U.S. policy; rather, they are irrelevant to it. The
correlation between abuse of human rights and U.S. support derives from deeper
factors. The deterioration in human rights and the increase in U.S. aid and support
each correlate, independently, with a third and crucial factor: namely, improvement of
the investment climate, as measured by privileges granted foreign capital. The
climate for business operations improves as unions and other popular organizations
are destroyed, dissidents are tortured or eliminated, real wages are depressed, and
the society as a whole is placed in the hands of a collection of thugs who are willing
to sell out to the foreigner for a share of the loot ~ often too large a share, as
business regularly complains. And as the climate for business operations improves,
the society is welcomed into the "Free World" and offered the specific kind of "aid"
that will further these favorable developments.
15. On systematic hideous abuses in regions of greatest U.S. influence, see
especially footnotes 23 and 24 of this chapter, and also its footnotes 12,13 and 1 4. See
also chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnotes 1 5 and 54; footnotes 8 and 38 of chapter 4 of
UP.; footnote 1 1 of chapter 7 of U.P.; and chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 32, 57 and
85.
1 6. For Truman's attitude towards Stalin, see for example, Robert H. Ferrell, ed.,
Dear Bess: the Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959, New York: Norton, 1983.
In letters to his wife, Truman wrote (pp. 520-522):
I like Stalin. He is straightforward. Knows what he wants and will compromise when
he can't get it. . . . Uncle Joe gave his dinner last night. There were at least twenty-
five toasts - so much getting up and down that there was practically no time to eat or
drink either ~ a very good thing. . . . Since I'd had America's No. 1 pianist to play for
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 10
Uncle Joe at my dinner he had to go me one better. I had one and one violinist -- and
he had two of each. . . . The old man loves music. . . . Stalin felt so friendly that he
toasted the pianist when he played a Tskowsky (you spell it) piece especially for him.
Robert H. Ferrell, e<±, Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, New York:
Penguin, 1980. Similarly, in his private papers, Truman wrote (pp. 44, 53):
"A common everyday citizen [in Russia] has about as much say about his
government as a stock holder in the Standard Oil of New Jersey has about his
Company. But I don't care what they do. They evidently like their government or
they wouldn't die for it. I like ours so let's get along." "I can deal with Stalin. He is
honest -- but smart as hell."
For discussion of the attitudes of Truman and other Washington officials towards
Stalin and his regime, see for example, Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power:
National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1992. An excerpt (pp. 15, 52-53):
At the end of the war, U.S. officials . . . wanted to cooperate with the Kremlin. But
they harbored a distrust sufficiently profound to require terms of cooperation
compatible with vital American interests. Truman said it pointedly when he
emphasized that the United States had to have its way 85 percent of the time.
Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, the Republican spokesman on foreign policy, was a
little more categorical: "I think our two antipathetical systems can dwell in the world
together -- but only on a basis which establishes the fact that we mean what we say
when we say it. . . ."
Humanitarian impulses also were a minor influence on U.S. policy. Principles
were espoused because they served American interests and because they accorded
with American ideological predilections and not because top officials felt a strong
sense of empathy with the peoples under former Nazi rule and potential Soviet
tutelage. . . . [I]n Washington, top officials -- Truman, Byrnes, Leahy, Forrestal,
Patterson, Davies, Grew, Dunn, Lincoln -- rarely thought about the personal travail
caused by war, dislocation, and great power competition. . . . Suffering had to be
relieved and hope restored in order to quell the potential for revolution. Rarely does a
sense of real compassion and/or moral fervor emerge from the documents and
diaries of high officials. These men were concerned primarily with power and self-
interest, not with real people facing real problems in the world that had just gone
through fifteen years of economic strife, Stalinist terror, and Nazi genocide.
Perhaps nothing better illustrates this moral obtuseness than the way top U.S.
officials felt about Stalin. Who could doubt his barbarism? Although the full
dimensions of the Gulag were not known, the trials, purges, and murders of the
1930's were a matter of public record. Yet far from worrying about their inability to
satisfy Stalin's paranoia, American officialdom had great hope for Stalin in 1945. He
appeared frank and willing to compromise. Truman liked him. . . . Lest one think
these were the views of a naive American politician, it should be remembered that
crusty, tough-nosed Admiral Leahy had some of the same feelings. And so did
Eisenhower, Harriman, and Byrnes. . . . What went on in Russia, Truman declared,
was the Russians' business. The president was fighting for U.S. interests, and
Uncle Joe seemed to be the man with whom one could deal. . . . Truman, among
others, frequently voiced concern for Stalin's health; it would be a "real catastrophe"
should he die. If "it were possible to see him [Stalin] more frequently," Harriman
claimed, "many of our difficulties would be overcome."
See also, Frank Kofsky, Harry Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful
Campaign to Deceive the Nation, New York: St. Martin's, 1 993.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 11
1 7. On Churchill's attitude towards Stalin, see for example, Lloyd C. Gardner,
Spheres of Influence: The Great Powers Partition Europe, From Munich to Yalta,
Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1993, pp. 235, 207, 240 (Churchill praised Stalin as a "great man,
whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia but the world"; he spoke warmly of his
relationship of "friendship and intimacy" with the bloodthirsty tyrant; "My hope," Churchill
said, "is in the illustrious President of the United States and in Marshal Stalin, in whom
we shall find the champions of peace, who after smiting the foe will lead us to carry on
the task against poverty, confusion, chaos, and oppression"; during the war he signed
his letters to Stalin, "Your friend and war-time comrade"; in February 1945, after the
Yalta Conference, Churchill told his Cabinet that "Premier Stalin was a person of great
power, in whom he had every confidence," and that it was important that he should
remain in charge).
1 8. For Churchill's remark about the British occupation of Greece, see Winston
Churchill, The Second World War, Volume 6, Triumph and Tragedy, Boston: Houghton-
Mifflin, 1 953. His exact words (p. 249):
Do not hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in
progress. . . . We have to hold and dominate Athens. It would be a great thing for
you to succeed in this without bloodshed if possible, but also with bloodshed if
necessary.
For Churchill's praise of Stalin's restraint, see Lloyd C. Gardner, Spheres of
Influence: The Great Powers Partition Europe, From Munich to Yalta, Chicago: Ivan Dee,
1993 (citing declassified British cabinet records). Churchill stated to the British Cabinet
with regard to Stalin and Greece that (p. 244):
[T]he Russian attitude [at the Yalta conference] could not have been more
satisfactory. There was no suggestion on Premier Stalin's part of criticism of our
policy. He had been friendly and even jocular in discussions of it. . . . Premier Stalin
had most scrupulously respected his acceptance of our position in Greece. He
understood that the emissary sent to the U.S.S.R. by the Greek Communists had
first been put under house arrest, and then sent back. . . . The conduct of the
Russians in this matter had strengthened [Churchill's] view that when they made a
bargain, they desired to keep it.
See also, Lawrence S. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, 1943-1949, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 6-9, 23-28; David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're
On Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1999, ch. 4. And see footnote 72 of this chapter.
1 9. On the U.S. government and business community's support for Hitler and
Mussolini before World War II, see for example, Christopher Simpson, The Splendid
Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Monroe, ME:
Common Courage, 1995, especially pp. 46-64; David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're On
Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1999, chs. 1 and 3; David F. Schmitz, The United
States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1988; John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: the View from America, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1972.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 12
The reasons for the warm American response to Fascism and Nazism that are
detailed in these books are explained quite openly in the internal U.S. government
planning record. For instance, a 1 937 Report of the State Department's European
Division described the rise of Fascism as the natural reaction of "the rich and middle
classes, in self-defense" when the "dissatisfied masses, with the example of the Russian
revolution before them, swing to the Left." Fascism therefore "must succeed or the
masses, this time reinforced by the disillusioned middle classes, will again turn to the
Left." The Report also noted that "if Fascism cannot succeed by persuasion [in
Germany], it must succeed by force." It concluded that "economic appeasement should
prove the surest route to world peace," a conclusion based on the belief that Fascism as
a system was compatible with U.S. interests. See Schmitz, The United States and
Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, p. 140; see also, Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins
of the Cold War and the National Security State, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977, p. 26
(U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Bullitt "believed that only Nazi Germany could stay
the advance of Soviet Bolshevism in Europe").
At the same time, Britain's special emissary to Germany, Lord Halifax, praised
Hitler for blocking the spread of Communism, an achievement that brought England to "a
much greater degree of understanding of all his [i.e. Hitler's] work" than heretofore, as
Halifax recorded his words to the German Chancellor while Hitler was conducting his
reign of terror in the late 1 930s. See Lloyd Gardner, Spheres of Influence: The Great
Powers Partition Europe, From Munich to Yalta, Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1993, p. 13. See
also, Clement Leibovitz, The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal, Edmonton, Canada: Les Editions
Duval, 1 993 (fascinating 533-page study reproducing vast documentation, largely from
recently-declassified British government sources, of the secret British deal allowing
Hitler free rein to expand in Eastern Europe; this deal was "motivated by anti-
communism" and was "not a sudden policy quirk but was the crowning of incessant
efforts to encourage Japan and Germany 'to take their fill' of the Soviet Union" [p. 6].
Leibovitz's study also establishes conclusively, from a wide variety of sources, that there
was great sympathy for Hitler's and Mussolini's policies among the British
establishment).
Furthermore, although Hitler's rhetorical commitments and actions were completely
public, internal U.S. government documents from the 1 930s refer to him as a "moderate."
For example, the American charge d'affaires in Berlin wrote to Washington in 1 933 that
the hope for Germany lay in "the more moderate section of the [Nazi] party, headed by
Hitler himself . . . which appeal[s] to all civilized and reasonable people," and seems to
have "the upper hand" over the violent fringe. "From the standpoint of stable political
conditions, it is perhaps well that Hitler is now in a position to wield unprecedented
power," noted the American Ambassador, Frederic Sackett. See Schmitz, The United
States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, pp. 1 40, 1 74, 1 33, and ch. 9; Foreign Relations of
the United States, 1933, Vol. II ("British Commonwealth, Europe, Near East and Africa"),
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949, pp. 329, 209.
The U.S. reaction to Fascist Italy before the war was similar. A high-level inquiry of
the Wilson administration determined in December 1 91 7 that with rising labor militancy,
Italy posed "the obvious danger of social revolution and disorganization." A State
Department official noted privately that "If we are not careful we will have a second
Russia on our hands," adding: "The Italians are like children" and "must be [led] and
assisted more than almost any other nation." Mussolini's Blackshirts solved the problem
by violence. They carried out "a fine young revolution," the American Ambassador to
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 13
Italy observed approvingly, referring to Mussolini's March on Rome in October 1922,
which brought Italian democracy to an end. Racist goons effectively ended labor
agitation with government help, and the democratic deviation was terminated; the United
States watched with approval. The Fascists are "perhaps the most potent factor in the
suppression of Bolshevism in Italy" and have much improved the situation generally, the
Embassy reported to Washington, while voicing some residual anxiety about the
"enthusiastic and violent young men" who have brought about these developments. The
Embassy continued to report the appeal of Fascism to "all patriotic Italians," simple-
minded folk who "hunger for strong leadership and enjoy . . . being dramatically
governed." See Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, pp. 14, 36, 44,
52; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919, Vol. I ("Paris Peace Conference"),
Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1942, p. 47.
As time went on, the American Embassy was well aware of Mussolini's totalitarian
measures. Fascism had "effectively stifled hostile elements in restricting the right of free
assembly, in abolishing freedom of the press and in having at its command a large
military organization," the Embassy reported in a message of February 1 925, after a
major Fascist crackdown. But Mussolini remained a "moderate," manfully confronting
the fearsome Bolsheviks while fending off the extremist fringe on the right. His
qualifications as a moderate were implicit in the judgment expressed by Ambassador
Henry Fletcher: the choice in Italy is "between Mussolini and Fascism and Giolitti and
Socialism, between strong methods of internal peace and prosperity and a return to free
speech, loose administration and general disorganization. Peace and Prosperity were
preferred." (Giolitti was the liberal Prime Minister, who had collaborated with Mussolini
in the repression of labor but now found himself a target as well.) See Schmitz, The
United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, pp. 76-77f.
On the views of U.S. corporations towards Fascism, including details of
participation in the plunder of Jewish assets under Hitler's Aryanization programs --
notably, the Ford Motor Company -- see for example, Christopher Simpson, The
Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Monroe,
ME: Common Courage, 1995, especially ch. 5 (on Ford's role in Aryanization of Jewish
property, see pp. 62-63). An excerpt (p. 64):
Many U.S. companies bought substantial interests in established German
companies, which in turn plowed that new money into Aryanizations or into arms
production banned under the Versailles Treaty. According to a 1936 report from
Ambassador William Dodd to President Roosevelt, a half-dozen key U.S. companies
~ International Harvester, Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and du
Pont - had become deeply involved in German weapons production. . . .
U.S. investment in Germany accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power,
despite the Depression and Germany's default on virtually all of its government and
commercial loans. Commerce Department reports show that U.S. investment in
Germany increased some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940, while declining
sharply everywhere else in continental Europe. U.S. investment in Great Britain . . .
barely held steady over the decade, increasing only 2.6 percent.
Bradford C. Snell, American Ground Transport: A Proposal for Restructuring the
Automobile, Truck, Bus, and Rail Industries, Hearings Before the U.S. Senate
Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, 93rd Congress,
2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974, pp. 16-23 (discussing
the major role that General Motors, Ford, and to a lesser extent Chrysler, played in the
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 14
Nazi war effort); Edwin Black, I.B.M. and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between
Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation, New York: Crown, 2001 ;
Reinhold Billstein et al., Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors, and Forced
Labor in Germany during the Second World War, New York: Berghahn, 2000; Gerard
Colby Zilg, Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain, Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice-Hall,
1 974, especially pp. 292-31 4, 353-354 (on corporate leaders' plans for a fascist coup in
the U.S. in 1 934, and on the Du Pont Company's arming of the rising Axis powers in the
1 930s). For more on the fascist coup plot -- discussed in Zilg's outstanding study -- see
Union Calendar No. 44, Report No. 153, "Investigation of Nazi and Other Propaganda,"
February 15, 1935, House of Representatives, 74th Congress, 1st Session, Washington:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1935 (C.I.S. Serial Set #9890, pp. 9-10); Dickstein-
McCormick Special Committee on Un-American Activities, "Investigation of Nazi
Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities,"
beginning June 5, 1934, House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1935 (C.I.S.#688-3-B), especially
Testimony of Major-General Smedley D. Butler (Ret.) on November 20, 1934, pp. 8-20,
and following testimony, pp. 20-128 (microfiche cards 7 and 8 of 15).
For a sample of the U.S. business press's attitudes, see "The State: Fascist and
Total," Fortune, July 1934 [special issue devoted to Italian Fascism], pp. 47-48. This
issue comments approvingly that "the purpose and effect of Fascism" is "to unwop the
wops," and that the idea that the Italians ought to resent Fascism "is a confusion, and we
can only get over it if we anesthetize for the moment our ingrained idea that democracy
is the only right and just conception of government." See also, John P. Diggins,
Mussolini and Fascism: the View from America, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1 972; John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!: Lies,
Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, p.
149.
On protection of former Nazis and Fascists after World War II by the U.S. and British
governments, see footnote 80 of this chapter. On post-war protection by the U.S. of
Japanese Fascists who developed and tested biological weapons, see footnote 62 of
chapter 8 of U.P.
On the U.S. government's refusal to admit into the United States most Jewish and
other refugees fleeing from the Holocaust, see for example, Arthur D. Morse, While Six
Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy, New York: Random House, 1967; David
S. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941, Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1973; Saul S. Friedman, No Haven for the
Oppressed: United States Policy toward Jewish Refugees, 1938-1945, Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1973; Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection: What Price
Israel?, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978 (on the unwillingness of American Zionists to
support plans for bringing European Jews to the United States in 1942; instead, they
wanted them to go to Palestine).
On U.S. attitudes towards the Spanish Fascist leader Francisco Franco, see
footnote 61 of this chapter; and the text of chapter 6 of U.P.
On U.S. attitudes towards Fascist Japan, see for example, Noam Chomsky, "The
Revolutionary Pacifism of A.J. Muste: On the Backgrounds of the Pacific War," in Noam
Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays,
New York: Pantheon, 1 969, pp. 1 59-220.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 15
Chomsky explains that it was not until European Fascism attacked U.S. interests
directly that it became an avowed enemy, and the American reaction to Japanese
Fascism was much the same.
20. For The Nation's cover story, see "Norman Rush contemplates the bust of
socialism . . . and why we will all miss it so much," Nation, January 24, 1 994, article on p.
90 ("The socialist experiment is over and the capitalist experiment roars to its own
conclusion").
21 . For contemporaneous criticism of the Bolsheviks by leftists, see for example,
Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1961 (original 1918)(sympathetic and fraternal, but incisive, critique of Bolshevism
written in prison). An excerpt (pp. 62, 71):
To be sure, every democratic institution has its limits and shortcomings, things
which it doubtless shares with all other human institutions. But the remedy which
Trotsky and Lenin have found, the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than
the disease it is supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which
alone can come the correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions.
That source is the active, untrammeled, energetic political life of the broadest masses
of the people. . . . The whole mass of the people must take part in [economic and
social life]. Otherwise, socialism will be decreed from behind a few official desks by
a dozen intellectuals. Public control is indispensably necessary. Otherwise the
exchange of experiences remains only within the closed circle of the officials of the
new regime. Corruption becomes inevitable. Socialism in life demands a complete
spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule.
Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, London: Allen and Unwin,
1962 (original 1920)(written after an invited, month-long official tour of Soviet Russia).
An excerpt (pp. 9-1 0, 26-29):
By far the most important aspect of the Russian Revolution is as an attempt to
realize socialism. I believe that socialism is necessary to the world, and believe that
the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the
realization of socialism in the future. . . . But the method which Moscow aims at
establishing socialism is a pioneer method, rough and dangerous, too heroic to count
the cost of the opposition it arouses. I do not believe that by this method a stable or
desirable form of socialism can be established. . . .
When a Russian Communist speaks of dictatorship, he means the word literally,
but when he speaks of the proletariat, he means the word in a Pickwickian [i.e. highly
specialized] sense. He means the "class-conscious" part of the proletariat, i.e., the
Communist Party. He includes people by no means proletarian (such as Lenin and
Chicherin) who have the right opinions, and he excludes such wage earners as have
not the right opinions, whom he classifies as lackeys of the bourgeoisie. . . .
Opposition is crushed without mercy, and without shrinking from the methods of the
Tsarist police, many of whom are still employed at their old work. . . . Bolshevism is
internally aristocratic and externally militant. The Communists ... are practically the
sole possessors of power, and they enjoy innumerable advantages in consequence.
M. Sergven [probably a pseudonym for the Russian anarcho-syndicalist Gregory
Maksimov], "Paths of Revolution," in Libertarian Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 1, Winter 1970, pp.
9-1 2 [originally published in Voln'nyi Golos Truda (The Free Voice of Labor), Moscow,
September 16, 1918, pp. 1-2]. An excerpt:
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 16
[T]he proletariat is gradually being enserfed by the state. It is being transformed into
servants over whom there has risen a new class of administrators -- a new class
born mainly from the womb of the so-called intelligentsia. . . . We do not mean to say
that ... the Bolshevik party had set out to create a new class system. But we do
say that even the best intentions and aspirations must inevitably be smashed against
the evils inherent in any system of centralized power. . . . The Revolution . . . threw
itself into the arms of the old tyrant, centralized power, which is squeezing out its
life's breath. We were too unorganized, too weak, and so we have allowed this to
happen.
Emma Goldman, "Afterword to My Disillusionment in Russia," in Alix Kates Shulman,
ed., Red Emma Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches By Emma Goldman, New
York: Vintage, 1972, pp. 337-358 (original 1923)(written after two years of living in Soviet
Russia). An excerpt (pp. 340, 343, 353-354):
For several months following October [the Bolsheviks] suffered the popular
forces to manifest themselves, the people carrying the Revolution into ever-widening
channels. But as soon as the Communist Party felt itself sufficiently strong in the
government saddle, it began to limit the scope of popular activity. All the succeeding
acts of the Bolsheviki, all their following policies, changes of policies, their
compromises and retreats, their methods of suppression and persecution, their
terrorism and extermination of all other political views - all were but the means to an
end: the retaining of the State power in the hands of the Communist Party. Indeed,
the Bolsheviki themselves (in Russia) made no secret of it. . . .
True Communism was never attempted in Russia, unless one considers thirty-
three categories of pay, different food rations, privileges to some and indifference to
the great mass as Communism. In the early period of the Revolution it was
comparatively easy for the Communist Party to possess itself of power. All the
revolutionary elements, carried away by the ultra-revolutionary promises of the
Bolsheviki, helped the latter to power. Once in possession of the State the
Communists began their process of elimination. All the political parties and groups
which refused to submit to the new dictatorship had to go. First the Anarchists and
Left Social Revolutionists, then the Mensheviki and other opponents from the Right,
and finally everybody who dared aspire to an opinion of his own. Similar was the fate
of all independent organizations. They were either subordinated to the needs of the
new State or destroyed altogether, as were the Soviets, the trade unions and the
cooperatives ~ three great factors for the realization of the hopes of the Revolution. .
It is not only Bolshevism, Marxism, and Governmentalism which are fatal to
revolution as well as to all vital human progress. The main cause of the defeat of the
Russian Revolution lies much deeper. It is to be found in the whole Socialist
conception of revolution itself. The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution ~
particularly the Socialist idea - is that revolution is a violent change of social
conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant
over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical
change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional
rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the "dictatorship of the
proletariat" - or by that of its "advance guard," the Communist Party; Lenin takes the
seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of People's
Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War, and a labourer becomes the
Military Governor General of Moscow. That is, in essence, the Bolshevik conception
of revolution, as translated into actual practice. And with a few minor alterations it is
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 17
also the idea of revolution held by all other Socialist parties. This conception is
inherently and fatally false. Revolution is indeed a violent process. But if it is to
result only in a change of dictatorship, in a shifting of names and political
personalities, then it is hardly worth while. ... It is at once the great failure and the
great tragedy of the Russian Revolution that it attempted (in leadership of the ruling
political party) to change only institutions and conditions, while ignoring entirely the
human and social values involved in the Revolution.
For a much earlier critique of Leninist organizational principles, see Rosa
Luxemburg, Leninism or Marxism?, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961
(original 1904). An excerpt (p. 102):
If we assume the viewpoint claimed as his own by Lenin and we fear the influence of
intellectuals in the proletarian movement, we can conceive of no greater danger to the
Russian party than Lenin's plan of organization. Nothing will more surely enslave a
young labor movement to an intellectual elite hungry for power than this bureaucratic
strait jacket, which will immobilize the movement and turn it into an automaton
manipulated by a Central Committee. On the other hand, there is no more effective
guarantee against opportunist intrigue and personal ambition than the independent
revolutionary action of the proletariat, as a result of which the workers acquire the
sense of political responsibility and self-reliance. What is today only a phantom
haunting Lenin's imagination may become reality tomorrow.
For a classic discussion of the reactionary character of the Bolshevik takeover by a
participant in the events, see Voline [i.e. Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eichenbaum], The
Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921, Detroit: Black & Red, 1974 (original 1947).
22. For the Walters program, see "Americans Beware! -- Danger in Guatemala,"
20/20, A. B.C. television news-magazine, June 3, 1 994, transcript #1 422-1 .
23. On kidnapping of children, see footnote 24 of this chapter. On child slavery,
child sex slavery, and child labor throughout U.S. -dominated Third World domains, see
for example, Reuters, "Exploitation of children documented in world study," Christian
Science Monitor, December 19, 1979, "Living" section, p. 15. An excerpt:
Almost 200 million children throughout the world may be slaving away, often in
dismal poverty, according to a new international study of child labor. Children have
been maimed in India to become more effective beggars, sold to work under appalling
conditions in factories in Thailand, and turned into Latin American chattel slaves at
the age of three. . . . The 170-page book [Child Workers Today, by James Challis
and David Elliman], sponsored by the London-based Anti-Slavery Society, is
peppered with pitiful examples. . . .
Latin America is singled out in the book as the continent where child labor will
probably be harder to eradicate than anywhere else in the world. In countries with
large Indian populations like Bolivia, girls as young as three are "adopted" by white
families, the book says. Traditionally they are sexually available to the sons of the
family, not allowed to marry, and the children they conceive become virtual chattel
slaves in turn.
George C. Moffett III, "Use of Child Labor Increases Worldwide," Christian Science
Monitor, July 21 , 1992, p. 8. An excerpt:
It is one of the grimmer ironies of the age that even as global employment rates
for adults are declining, the incidence of child labor ~ often forced, frequently
debilitating - is on the increase. As many as a quarter of all children between ages
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 18
10 and 14 in some regions of the world may be working, according to a report issued
today by the Geneva-based International Labor Organization (I.L.O.) . . . The report
defines child labor as a condition in which children are exploited, overworked,
deprived of health and education -- "or just deprived of their childhood."
Just how many children are affected is hard to say, since most work illegally or
for small merchants, family cottage industries, and farms, where they are "invisible to
the collectors of labor-force statistics," says the I.L.O. study, entitled "Child Labor: A
Dramatically Worsening Global Problem." It says the figure is certainly in the
hundreds of millions, including 7 million in Brazil alone.
Amport Tantuvanich, A.P., "Slavery the fate of these children," Boston Globe, September
24, 1 978, p. 32. An excerpt:
They labor hour after hour without a break around furnaces that generate 1450
degree heat. Their arms and hands bear scars from burns and cuts which
management treats with herbal ointments, toothpaste, fish sauce and pain killers. But
these workers in a Bangkok glass factory are children. They are among tens of
thousands in Thailand that officials acknowledge are illegally employed and often
cheated and abused. Some are sold by their parents to factory owners and become
virtual slaves. . . .
In one of the biggest raids this year, police rescued 63 children from jail-like
conditions in a tinsel-paper factory in Bangkok. Some of the children told police they
were "purchased" by the factory, which had sent a broker to recruit young workers in
northeastern Thailand. . . . The children in the glass factory work 1 hours a day,
seven days a week. They are paid the equivalent of 90 cents a day. . . . Labor
specialists say that a combination of wide-open free enterprise and a lack of labor-
union power contributes to the child labor problem. Under laws laid down by
Thailand's military government, strikes and other labor union activities are forbidden.
John Stackhouse, "The girls of Tamil Nadu," Globe & Mail (Toronto), November 20,
1993, p. D1. An excerpt:
On these drought-stricken plains of Tamil Nadu in Southern India, close to
100,000 children - three-quarters of them girls ~ go to work every morning in match
factories, fireworks plants, rock quarries, tobacco mills, repair shops and tea houses.
Together, they make up the single biggest concentration of child labour in the world.
In an age when child labour has disappeared from much of the world, it continues
to be rampant in South Asia. The Operations Research Group, a respected Indian
organization, has pegged the number of full-time child workers at 44 million in India,
with perhaps 10 million more toiling in neighbouring Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and
Sri Lanka - a total almost equal to the population of Britain.
See also, Ian Black, "Peace or no peace, Israel will still need cheap Arab labour," New
Statesman (U.K.), September 29, 1 978, pp. 403-404. An excerpt:
Just after 4 a.m., as the sky begins to pale, you can see small groups of people
standing around the pumps, huddled in corners, leaning against walls. They have
just scrambled off dilapidated trucks and vans that bring them daily from Gaza, Khan
Younis and Rafiah in Northern Sinai, and they are clutching plastic bags containing
their food for the day. Some are no more than six or seven years old. The scene
has become known in Israel as the Children's Market at the Ashkelon junction.
By 5 o'clock the sun is up and the first employers are arriving. They come in
jeeps from the prosperous Moshavim (small private or semi-collective farms) situated
on either side of the now invisible "green line" - the pre-1967 border. They are at
once surrounded by swarms of waiting workers. In broken Hebrew - but fluent
enough to cover the bare essentials of selling themselves for the day ~ the little
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 19
labourers persuade the Israelis of their skills: "Sir I good work sir, 60 pounds all day
sir" and so on. . . . Sometimes they are paid in full for their work -- usually a meagre,
subsistence wage; often they are cheated even on that. And since their employment
is illegal, there is little they can do.
24. On kidnapping and murder of children in U.S. -dominated Third World domains
-- for organ transplants and otherwise -- see for example, Hugh O'Shaughnessy,
"Takeaway babies farmed to order," Observer (London), October 1 , 1 993, p. 14. An
excerpt:
San Salvador's eastern slum suburb . . . [is] home to El Salvador's urban
proletariat -- and to its flourishing baby trade. Here are the casas de engorde, or
"fattening houses," where newborn babies, preferably male and not too dark-skinned,
are brought to be plumped up for sale. Usually run by lawyers in collaboration with
nurses and baby minders, the fattening houses have the job of cleaning up the
babies, freeing them of worms, lice and nits, and feeding them so they fetch the best
price. The best price for a good-looking male child is now between £7,000 and
£10,000 - double the price a decade ago, say lawyers familiar with the trade in El
Salvador and Guatemala. Bought for, say, £200 from kidnappers or poor mothers,
the baby farmers aim to sell the "goods" for at least 30 times their initial investment.
Though the furtive trade is impossible to quantify, estimates say several thousand
children are sold every year from Central America. Though the majority of young
people kidnapped or bought in El Salvador are destined for adoption in Canada, the
United States or Italy, there can be little doubt that some go to Britain. In addition to
the babies sold to childless couples in rich countries, there are others bought by
criminals involved in pornography, prostitution or drugs, or by intermediaries in the
growing international trade in human organs. ... In Honduras ... the practice is for
baby farmers to adopt retarded children and use their organs as "spare parts." In
Guatemala City, the fire service and the undertakers are notorious for trading in the
organs of the dead, young and old, particularly in the corneas of the eyes. . . .
[0]n 1 June 1982, when Nelson was six months old, the Salvadorean army came
to the untidy village of San Antonio de la Cruz on the banks of the River Lempa,
supposedly as part of a military operation called La Guinda (The Glace Cherry)
directed against the left-wing guerrillas of the F.M.L.N. Instead, they had a very
successful day's baby-hunting. After surrounding the village, the army loaded their
helicopters with 50 babies, including Nelson. Their parents have never seen them
since. . . . [Nelson's mother, Maria Magdalena,] desperately clung to the helicopter,
but the soldiers pushed her off.
Jan Rocha and Ed Vulliamy, "Brazilian children 'sold for transplants,'" Guardian Weekly
(U.K.), September 30, 1 990, p. 1 0. An excerpt:
Brazilian federal police have been ordered by the Justice Ministry to investigate
allegations that children ostensibly adopted by Italian couples are being used for illicit
organ transplants in Europe. Italian authorities have been asked by Interpol to look
into the allegations, which include claims that Brazilian children are being killed in
Europe and their kidneys, testicles, livers and hearts sold for between £20,000 and
£50,000. Such a trade is known to exist in Mexico and Thailand. . . . Handicapped
children are said to be preferred for transplant operations. . . .
False papers are obtained for stolen babies in many ways. Police discovered
that Rita de Cassia Costa, aged 21 , had "given birth" three times last year: once to
her own child, and twice to give an identity to stolen babies. She was arrested with a
lawyer, Dorivan Matias Teles, who is accused of involvement in an international
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 20
network allegedly supplying babies for "brain death" operations to enable them to be
maintained alive until their organs were needed for transplants.
Robert Smith, "European Parliament Denunciation: The Trafficking of Central American
Children," Report on Guatemala (Guatemala News and Information Bureau, Oakland,
CA), Vol. 1 0, Issue 3, July/August/September 1 989, pp. 4-5 (reprinting the text of the
European Parliament's November 1988 resolution on the trafficking of Central American
children). An excerpt:
Since 1987, numerous clandestine "human farms," houses where small children
are kept and fed prior to being sold, have been discovered in Guatemala and
Honduras. . . . According to Marta Gloria Torres, member of the Representation of
the United Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG), "A few cases are for adoptions, but the
great majority is for organ transplants or for prostitution." Near one farm discovered
in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the corpses of many infants were found, all with one or
more organs removed. . . . There are some reports of widows and parents, driven by
poverty, actually selling their own young children to these brokers. But in the last few
years, Guatemalan newspapers have reported a great number of young children
kidnapped from their parents' homes, from hospitals, and off the streets. . . .
The first "casa de engorde" ("fattening-up house") was discovered by the police in
Guatemala in February, 1987. Children found inside were destined for the United
States and Israel as organ donors, according to those arrested in the raid. In the
following month, another house was closed down in the capital. Records found
inside indicate that between October 1985 and March of 1986, 150 children were sold
outside the country. In June of 1988 alone, the Military Police found and closed five
of these underground houses. . . . Doctor Luis Genaro Morales, president of the
Guatemalan Pediatric Association, says child trafficking "is becoming one of the
principal non-traditional export products," and that it generates $20 million of business
a year.
Samuel Blixen [Uruguayan journalist], "'War' waged on Latin American street kids,"
Latinamerica press (Lima; Noticias Aliadas), November 7, 1991 , p. 3. An excerpt:
Against a backdrop of increasing poverty and street crime a new type of death
squad has sprung up: "clean-up squads," or "avengers." They target and
exterminate street kids, and many believe they are assisted by police and financed
by the business sector. Surviving as beggars, thieves, prostitutes, drug runners or
cheap factory workers, street kids are considered the criminals of the future and their
elimination will supposedly prevent future problems. Some victims are gunned down
while they are sleeping below bridges, on vacant lots and in doorways. Others are
kidnapped, tortured and killed in remote areas.
In Brazil, the bodies of young death squad victims are found in zones outside the
metropolitan areas with their hands tied, showing signs of torture and riddled with
bullet holes. . . . Street girls are frequently forced to work as prostitutes. ... In
Guatemala City, the majority of the 5,000 street kids work as prostitutes. In June
1990, eight children were kidnapped on a street in the capital by men riding in a jeep.
Three bodies were later found in a clearing with their ears cut off and eyes gouged
out: a warning about what could happen to possible witnesses. ... In a rare case, 1 2
groups accused of murdering children were broken up in Rio de Janeiro last July.
Minister of Health Alceni Guerra blamed business owners and merchants for
financing the death squads. . . . Yet, the murders continue to increase. In Rio de
Janeiro and in Sao Paulo reports indicate an average of three children under the age
of 18 are killed daily. According to statistics from the Legal Medical Institute, 427
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 21
children in Rio de Janeiro have been killed this year. Almost all the murders have
been attributed to death squads. . . .
In the Brazilian state of Rondonia on the Bolivian border, approximately 1,000
children work as virtual slaves extracting tin and another 2,000 adolescents work as
prostitutes, according to union sources. Private employment agencies in Puerto
Maldonado, capital of the Peruvian jungle department of Madre de Dios, recruit
children to pan for gold. The children are sold to the highest bidder, according to
Vicente Solorio, head of an investigation commission of the Peruvian Labor Ministry. .
. . Children work 18 hours a day in water up to their knees and are paid a daily ration
of bananas and boiled yucca, reported a young campesina who escaped after eight
months of forced labor.
Gilberto Dimenstein (introduction by Jan Rocha), Brazil: War on Children, London: Latin
America Bureau, 1 991 . An excerpt (pp. 21 , 2):
"There is definitely a process of extermination of young people going on in various
parts of the country. And I have to recognise that, unfortunately, there are members
of the police force who are involved in the killing or who are giving protection to the
killers," admits Helio Saboya, head of the Justice Department in Rio de Janeiro. . . .
Almeida Filho, head of the Justice Department in Pernambuco, the biggest state in
the country's north-east region ... is accustomed to reading reports of murders of
young people in which the victims have suffered the most sadistic torture: genital
organs severed, eyes poked out, bodies burned by cigarette ends and slashed by
knives. . . .
There are an estimated 25 million deprived children in Brazil, and of these
between seven and eight million are on the streets. . . . During the day, the street
children's main concern is survival -- food. To get it they beg, pick pockets, steal
from shops, mug tourists, look after parked cars, shine shoes, or search litter bins.
Frequently glue takes the place of food. They sniff it from paper bags and for a few
glorious moments forget who or where they are.
Amnesty International, Political Violence in Colombia: Myth and reality, London:
Amnesty International Publications, March 1994. An excerpt (pp. 21-23):
A "social cleansing" operation uncovered in the northwest port city of Barranquilla
in February 1992 caused widespread revulsion in Colombia. University security
guards and police officers were killing people and selling their bodies to the illegal
trade in organs and corpses. The operation came to light when one of the intended
victims survived and escaped.
Oscar Hernandez said that security guards had lured him and other paper
collectors to the grounds of the Free University in Barranquilla by telling them they
could collect discarded cartons and bottles outside the University's School of
Medicine. Once inside the university grounds, the refuse collectors were shot or
beaten to death with clubs. Oscar Hernandez was beaten unconscious and was
presumably believed to be dead. When he regained consciousness early the
following morning he found himself in a room with several corpses. He escaped and
raised the alarm to a passing police patrol. . . . Security guards and the head of the
dissecting room were arrested and reportedly confessed that the traffic in bodies had
been going on for two years.
U.N. Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights,
E/CN.4/Sub.2/1 992/34, June 23, 1992 (testimony of University of Sao Paulo (Brazil)
Professor of Theology Father Barruel that "75 percent of the corpses [of murdered
children] reveal internal mutilation and the majority have their eyes removed").
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 22
On the "voluntary" sale of organs, see for example, Kenneth Freed, "Desperation:
Selling an Eye or a Kidney," Los Angeles Times, September 1 0, 1 981 , section 1 , p. 1 .
An excerpt:
Paulo Ricardo dos Santos Barreto and Maria Fatima Lopes don't know each
other, but they share something -- an extraordinary despair that is driving them to risk
mutilation of their own bodies, even blindness. The two young people -- he is 22 and
she 19 -- are among the growing number of Brazilians so crushed by poverty that
they are willing to sell their bodies. Not for prostitution, although that is common
enough here. No, Barreto is advertising a kidney, Lopes a cornea. "I sometimes live
on bread and water," Barreto said in explaining his situation. "I can't exist like this.
There is no other way out. . . ."
Barreto and Lopes are not alone. In a country where at least 15% of the people
are jobless and millions more earn less than $200 a month and inflation is 1 20% a
year, poverty is giving birth to monstrous acts of desperation. The Sunday classified
ads of Rio's biggest newspapers are a register of this despair, increasingly full of
offers by people to sell parts of themselves -- kidneys and eyes for the most part. In
a recent Sunday edition of O Globo, there were 10 ads offering to sell kidneys and
three more for corneas.
Hugh O'Shaughnessy, "Murder And Mutilation Supply Human Organ Trade,"
Observer (London), March 27, 1994, p. 27. An excerpt:
In January, a 29-year-old unemployed French electrician advertised in a Strasbourg
newspaper to exchange one of his kidneys for a job. As in the Third World, so in
cash-strapped Eastern Europe, where selling one's organs can be a source of hard
currency. A call last week to Robert Miroz, a kidney agent in the Polish city of
Swidnica, confirmed that organs were available; the price of a kidney was quoted as
pounds 12,000. Polish middlemen send their potential donors to a hospital in
Western Europe where the best-matched candidate sells his kidney for cash in hand
and a written undertaking from the recipient to bear all the costs of his post-operative
treatment.
It should be noted that trade in body parts does not pass entirely without censure: in
1994, President Clinton approved a National Security Council recommendation to
impose limited sanctions against Taiwanese exports, to punish Taiwan "for its alleged
failure to crack down adequately on trafficking in rhino horns and tiger parts." See
Jeremy Mark, "U.S. Will Punish Taiwan for Trade In Animal Parts," Wall Street Journal,
April 4, 1994, p. A8.
25. For the Amnesty International report discussing "social cleansing" in Colombia,
see footnotes 1 3 and 24 of this chapter.
26. On the emerging market in organs in Eastern Europe, see for example, Hugh
O'Shaughnessy, "Murder And Mutilation Supply Human Organ Trade," Observer
(London), March 27, 1994, p. 27. An excerpt:
A children's home in St. Petersburg, Russia, is giving away children in its care to
foreigners and does not bother to register the addresses to which they go. The
evidence, though circumstantial, points strongly to the orphans being robbed of their
organs and tissues. Dr. Jean-Claude Alt, an anaesthetist in Versailles and a leading
campaigner against illegal trading in human organs, says: "People come to the home
offering to adopt children with any ailment from a hare lip to Down's Syndrome and
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 23
severe mental disturbance. Their only stipulation is that they have no heart trouble.
What reasonable conclusion can you draw from that?" . . .
[T]hose with money who have wanted to jump the queues for kidneys in Western
Europe have gone to the Third World, where donors sell their organs for cash. At a
hospital in Bombay last week, Dr. Martin de Souza said a kidney transplant would
cost about pounds 7,500 fully inclusive. The price is similar in the Philippines capital,
Manila.
On the emerging market in children in Eastern Europe, see for example, Gabrielle
Glaser, "Booming Polish Market: Blond, Blue-Eyed Babies," New York Times, April 19,
1992, section 1 , p. 8. An excerpt:
Poland's opening to Western market forces has brought an unexpected side
effect: a booming traffic in the country's blond, blue-eyed babies. . . . Western
embassies in Warsaw have reported a striking rise in the number of residence visas
and passports granted to Polish infants and toddlers. ... In some cases, officials
say, poor, pregnant women give up their babies in exchange for money directly. But
most often, they say, administrators of homes for single mothers, as well as the
attorneys involved in the adoptions, receive up to tens of thousands of dollars. . . .
[S]ome of the cases reported are linked to the Roman Catholic Church. . . .
In a recent article, Marek Baranski wrote about one woman in the city of Lublin
who gave her unborn child up for adoption to an American couple in December 1 991
after being pressed by the nuns caring for her in a church home for single mothers.
Since the article appeared, Mr. Baranski said he has received several dozen letters,
most of them anonymous, from women throughout Poland who wrote of having the
same treatment in church-run homes. . . . [T]he mother superior of one home
received up to $25,000 for each baby boy and $15,000 for each baby girl. . . . Two
visitors driving a foreign car went to [this] home. . . . The mother superior at the
home, Sister Benigna, greeted the visitors with blessings and proudly displayed her
papal award for "defending life," an honor Pope John Paul II bestows on anti-abortion
crusaders in his native Poland. "How can I help you, dears?" she said, offering tea.
When the two said that they were journalists, Sister Benigna rose to her feet. "There
was a very bad article about us," she said. "It has given us great moral discomfort. I
cannot give you any information. Good-bye."
On the economic collapse in Eastern Europe, see footnote 1 of this chapter.
27. For Aviles's and other officials' statements about trade in children, see for
example, Hugh O'Shaughnessy, "Takeaway babies farmed to order," Observer
(London), October 1 , 1 993, p. 1 4. This article quotes Victoria de Aviles, the Salvadoran
government Procurator for the Defence of Children, as follows: "We know there is a big
trade in children in El Salvador, for pornographic videos, for organ transplants, for
adoption and for prostitution. We want to extend the use of checking identities of
children by using D.N.A. We will certainly look into what evidence you have -- even if it
involves the army We found the latest casa de engorde [i.e. 'fattening house' where
newborn babies are plumped up for sale] in San Marcos in July. There were six children
there."
In addition, the article cites the Guatemalan police spokesman Fredy Garcia
Avalos, and the European Parliament's findings, as follows:
The police in Guatemala, who are not known for exaggerating the seriousness of
their country's problems, say they have investigated 200 cases of baby trafficking
and discovered four casas de engorde. Fredy Garcia Avalos, the police spokesman,
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 24
says the racket is being run by lawyers, nurses, handlers and stand-in mothers.
One little village, Boca del Monte, he says, has achieved modest fame as a centre for
baby farming. The villagers make a standard charge of £1 8 a month to fatten up a
baby while the legal documentation relating to foreign adoption is sorted out. . . .
According to a report on the trade in transplant organs adopted by the European
Parliament in Strasbourg, only a quarter of the 4,000 Brazilian children authorised for
adoption in Italy were really adopted. The rest, the report's authors say, were
chopped up for their organs in undercover hospitals in Mexico and Europe to the
order of the Camorra, the Mafia of Naples.
For reports by other sources about the organ trade and widespread abuse of
children, see footnotes 23 and 24 of this chapter. See also footnote 1 3 of this chapter.
28. For Adams's phrase, see Robert F. Smith, What Happened in Cuba? A
Documentary History, New York: Twayne, 1 963, pp. 27-28, Document 5. His exact
words:
Cuba, almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations has
become an object of transcendent importance to the political and commercial
interests of our Union. . . . [I]n looking forward to the probable course of events for
the short period of half a century, it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that
the annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the
continuance and integrity of the Union itself. It is obvious however that for this event
we are not yet prepared. . . .
But there are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation; and if an apple
severed by the tempest from its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground,
Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable
of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union, which by the
same law of nature cannot cast her off from its bosom.
See also, Richard Drinnon, White Savage: the Case of John Dunn Hunter, New York:
Schocken, 1972, p. 158 (Thomas Jefferson advised President Madison to offer
Napoleon a free hand in Spanish America in return for the gift of Cuba to the United
States, and wrote to President Monroe in 1 823 that the U.S. should not go to war for
Cuba, "but the first war on other accounts will give it to us, or the Island will give itself to
us, when able to do so"); Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in
Central America, New York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), pp.
1 3-25.
29. On the timing of the formal U.S. decision to overthrow Castro, see for example,
Jules Benjamin, The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution: An Empire
of Liberty in an Age of National Liberation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
An excerpt (pp. 1 86-1 89, 207):
Though State Department liberals were later pilloried by U.S. conservatives as
pro-Castro dupes who had allowed a totalitarian regime to be constructed on the
island, as early as October 1959 - before there was any Soviet presence in Cuba
and while opposition media still existed ~ these liberals shifted policy to one of
overthrowing Castro's regime. . . . "Not only have our business interests in Cuba
been seriously affected," the [secret policy paper formulating the change] went on,
"but the United States cannot hope to encourage and support sound economic
policies in other Latin American countries and promote necessary private
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 25
investments in Latin America if it is or appears to be simultaneously cooperating with
the Castro program. . . ."
On January 18 [1960] the C.I.A. set up a special task force (Branch 4 of the
Western Hemisphere Division) composed mainly of veterans of the 1954 operation
against Arbenz in Guatemala. The task force prepared a wide-ranging assault on the
Castro regime. Early in March this plan was approved by the secret high-level study
group that oversaw all major covert operations. The approved program was sent to
Eisenhower on March 14. Three days later the president met with Allen Dulles and
gave final approval to the plan. ... A separate project to assassinate Castro and
other top Cuban leaders, under discussion since December 1959, was also
implemented by the C.I.A. Several of the actual attempts on Castro's life were
carried out by the agency with the cooperation of the U.S. Mafia. All of these actions
were to be complemented by a program of economic denial and, eventually, of
widespread economic warfare. . . .
[T]he original plan for the overthrow of Castro [was] drawn up in March 1 960 and
set in motion by President Eisenhower. The planning document states: "The purpose
of the program outlined herein is to bring about the replacement of the Castro regime
with one more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable
to the U.S. in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of U.S. intervention."
On Castro's early anti-Communist stance, see for example, Richard E. Welch,
Response to Revolution: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959-1961,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1 985. An excerpt (pp. 1 0-1 4):
[A] widely held myth holds that Fidel Castro was a communist from the beginning
of his career as a Cuban revolutionary. . . . Here is a myth that is not an
exaggeration but a lie. Castro at twenty-one was a left-leaning student who disliked
authority and had feelings of guilt and suspicion toward his own class, the Cuban
bourgeoisie. He was a revolutionary in search of a revolution, but he was not a
communist. By temperament a caudillo [military leader], and by the definitions of U.S.
political history never a democrat, Castro only became a Marxist sometime between
fall 1960 and fall 1961. Castro himself is partially responsible for the myths
surrounding his conversion to Marxist ideology. During a long speech on 2
December 1961 he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and in parts of that rambling
oration seemed to imply that he had long been sympathetic to socialist doctrine.
These portions were inaccurately translated in early press reports and subsequently
taken out of context by his enemies in the United States. . . . Actually the chief theme
of this confused and self-exculpatory address was that although he had always been
a socialist intuitively, he was initially in thralldom to bourgeois values. Only by hard
study and several stages had he come to a full appreciation of the superior wisdom of
Marx and Lenin. . . .
Castro's initial program called for representative democracy as well as social
reform and made no demands for the nationalization of land and industry. . . . The
Cuban Revolution evolved from a variant of democratic reformism to a variant of
communism, and its radicalization is best understood when its early years are
divided into three separate periods. These periods cannot be given specific dates,
but a logical three-part chronological division identifies as phase one, January-
October 1959; phase two, November 1 959-December 1960; and phase three, 1961
and spring 1962. Historians differ over the labels to be given these three phases.
For the historian who sees Castro's adoption of communism as the main theme of the
Cuban Revolution, phase one might be labeled "from anticommunism to anti-
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 26
anticommunism"; phase two, "from anti-anticommunism to pro-communism"; and
phase three, "from pro-communism to communist."
See also, William Appleman Williams, The United States, Cuba, and Castro: An
Essay on the Dynamics of Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire, New York: Monthly
Review, 1 962, p. 1 1 2 ("Castro moved ... to attack the Communist challenge to his
leadership. He did so very bluntly and angrily on May 8 and 1 6 [1 959], dissociating
himself from the Communist Party and its ideas and programs. He subsequently acted
in June to block Communist influence in the labor movement"); Wayne S. Smith, The
Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S. -Cuban Relations Since
1957, New York: Norton, 1987, p. 44 ("C.I.A. Deputy Director CP. Cabell confirmed
during testimony before a Senate subcommittee in November 1959 . . . 'Castro,' he said,
'is not a Communist ... the Cuban Communists do not consider him a Communist party
member or even a pro-Communist'"); Warren Hinckle and William W. Turner, The Fish Is
Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro, New York: Harper and Row, 1981 , p.
33 (the C.I.A.'s Latin America political action officer, Frank Bender, concluded: "Castro is
not only not a Communist ... he is a strong anti-Communist fighter").
30. On Kennedy's implementation of Operation MONGOOSE, see chapter 1 of
U.P. and its footnote 21 .
31 . On Cuba's achievements, see for example, Michael Stuhrenberg, "Pulling
Cuban Soldiers Out of Angola," Die Zeit (West Germany), in World Press Review,
December 1988, pp. 30-32. An excerpt:
Today, more than 10,000 Cuban doctors, teachers, construction workers, and
engineers work in 37 African, Asian, and Latin American countries. . . . For Cubans,
international service is a sign of personal courage, political maturity, and an
uncompromising attitude toward the "imperialist enemy." In schools, civilian
assistance is taught as the highest virtue. . . . Especially among teachers and
construction workers, the will to do service exceeds the demand. "The waiting lists
are getting longer," sighs the director of Cubatecnica, Cuba's state bureau for non-
military aid. . . . "The more critical a situation becomes somewhere, the more people
want to go. When we were trying to find 2,000 teachers for Nicaragua a few years
ago, we got 29,500 applications. Shortly thereafter, four of our teachers were killed
by the Contras. Subsequently, 92,000 teachers applied for service. . . ."
[T]he reservoir of volunteers for international service seems inexhaustible: In
1 985, 1 6,000 Cuban civilians worked in Third World countries. In that same year, the
U.S. had fewer than 6,000 Peace Corps development assistants in 59 countries and
about 1,200 specialists from the Agency for International Development in 70
countries. . . . Today, Cuba has more physicians working abroad than any
industrialized nation, and more than the U.N.'s World Health Organization. Countries,
like Angola, with little money, an infant mortality rate of more than 30 percent, and life
expectancy of less than 50 years, receive free Cuban aid. To get doctors from
international organizations, Angola would have to pay $1,500 to $2,000 a month for
one physician, not to mention the costs of accommodations that meet the
requirements of a Western doctor. . . . Cuba's international emissaries indeed are . . .
not party theoreticians, but men and women who live under conditions that most
development aid workers would not accept. And that is the basis for their success.
Tom J. Farer, "Human Rights and Human Welfare in Latin America," Daedalus, Fall
1983, pp. 139-170. An excerpt (pp. 155-157):
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 27
[T]here is a consensus among scholars of a wide variety of ideological positions that,
on the level of life expectancy, education, and health, Cuban achievement is
considerably greater than one would expect from its level of per capita income. A
recent study comparing 1 1 3 Third World countries in terms of these basic indicators
of popular welfare ranked Cuba first, ahead even of Taiwan.
Morris Morley and Chris McGillion, "That man in Havana may be there for some time,"
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), January 7, 1 992, p. 9. An excerpt:
That Cuba has survived at all under these circumstances [i.e. the U.S. embargo]
is an achievement in itself. That it registered the highest per capita increase in gross
social product (wages and social benefits) of any economy in Latin America -- and
almost double that of the next highest country -- over the period 1981-1990 is quite
remarkable.
Moreover, despite the economic difficulties, the average Cuban is still better fed,
housed, educated and provided for medically than other Latin Americans, and --
again atypically -- the Cuban Government has sought to spread the burden of the
new austerity measures equally among its people. Indeed, one only has to compare
the growing inequality, decaying infrastructure, massive health problems, creeping
stagnation, and rising poverty elsewhere in Latin America to believe that Fidel
Castro's Cuba will be around for quite some time yet.
Tim Golden, "Health Care, Cuba's Pride, Falls on Hard Times," New York Times,
October 30, 1994, section 1 , p. 1 . An excerpt:
Five years into the crushing economic crisis set off by the collapse of Cuba's
preferential trading partnerships in the former East block . . . even the most basic
medicines are often scarce. . . . And for a country now thought to have a per-capita
income comparable to that of its poorest neighbors, the broad measures of its health
may be even more impressive than in years past: infant mortality, estimated to have
fallen to 9.4 deaths for every 1 ,000 live births last year, was only a shade higher than
that in the United States; life expectancy at birth, 75.5 years in 1992, nearly equaled
that of Luxembourg. . . . Health officials say the shortages have been aggravated by
the United States economic embargo, which was tightened in 1992.
On Castro's repressions, see for example, Amnesty International, Political
Imprisonment in Cuba, London: Cuban-American National Foundation and Amnesty
International, 1 987. For comparison with the human rights records of neighboring
countries in Latin America, see footnote 13 of chapter 1 of U.P. (Guatemala); footnote 15
of chapter 2 of U.P. (El Salvador and Guatemala); footnotes 48 and 55 of this chapter (El
Salvador and Haiti); and footnote 54 of chapter 8 of U.P. (Guatemala).
32. The "demonstration effect" on other poor countries -- or "threat of a good
example" -- that occurs when one Third World nation begins successful independent
development is an extremely important topic. Chomsky argues that it is crucial to
understanding the Vietnam War and post-war U.S. policies towards Vietnam; the Central
America interventions of the 1 980s; U.S. attacks on Cuba and the longstanding
embargo; the 1 983 Grenada invasion; and other major foreign policy events.
For one example of an internal U.S. government warning about a potential
"demonstration effect" on other Third World countries from Cuba, see Walter LaFeber,
Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1 983
(2nd revised and expanded edition 1993). An excerpt (p. 157):
"Cuba's experiment with almost total state socialism is being watched closely by
other nations in the hemisphere," the Agency [the C.I.A.] told the White House in April
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 28
1 964, "and any appearance of success there could have an extensive impact on the
statist trend elsewhere in the area."
The same concern about Cuba's developmental successes also is expressed in other
now-declassified U.S. government planning documents. See for example, "United
States Policy Toward Latin America," July 3, 1 961 , Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1961-1963, Vol. XII ("The American Republics"), Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1996, Record No. 15. An excerpt (p. 33):
Latin America today is in a state of deep unrest. Most of its countries are
economically underdeveloped and socially backward. The distribution of land and
other forms of national wealth greatly favors the propertied classes. The masses
suffer from poor housing, malnutrition and illiteracy. In many countries large rural
groups, which include most of the Indian peoples, are not integrated into the
economic and social life of the nation. The poor and underprivileged, stimulated by
the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent
living. Meanwhile, the population is increasing much more rapidly than the rate of
production. International communism, encouraged by its successes in Cuba and
assisted by the Castro regime, is trying to take advantage of this explosive situation
to subvert other countries of the hemisphere.
For another example of U.S. planners' concern about the threat of successful
independent development having a "demonstration effect" in the Third World, see
Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, New York:
Summit, 1 983. This book recounts U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's warning
that the contagious example of Salvador Allende's Chile might infect not only Latin
America but also Southern Europe -- not in fear that Chilean hordes were about to
descend upon Rome, but that Chilean successes might send to Italian voters the
message that democratic social reform was a possible option and thus contribute to the
rise of social democracy and Eurocommunism that was greatly feared by Washington
and Moscow alike. An excerpt (p. 270):
[According to former National Security Council staff member Roger Morris,] Kissinger
. . . seemed to be truly concerned about Allende's election: "I don't think anybody in
the government understood how ideological Kissinger was about Chile. I don't think
anybody ever fully grasped that Henry saw Allende as being a far more serious
threat than Castro. If Latin America ever became unraveled, it would never happen
with a Castro. Allende was a living example of democratic social reform in Latin
America. All kinds of cataclysmic events rolled around, but Chile scared him. He
talked about Eurocommunism [in later years] the same way he talked about Chile
early on. Chile scared him." Another N.S.C. aide recalls a Kissinger discussion of
the Allende election in terms of Italy, where the Communist Party was growing in
political strength. The fear was not only that Allende would be voted into office, but
that -- after his six-year term - the political process would work and he would be
voted out of office in the next election. Kissinger saw the notion that Communists
could participate in the electoral process and accept the results peacefully as the
wrong message to send Italian voters.
See also footnotes 7, 8, 68 and 108 of this chapter; chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 20;
and chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnote 8.
The threat of independence in one Third World country being a dangerous example
that might "infect" others often is masked by planners as a military threat. See for
example, Dean Acheson [U.S. Secretary of State, 1948 to 1952], Present at the Creation:
My Years at the State Department, New York: Norton, 1 969. An excerpt (p. 21 9):
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 29
In the past eighteen months . . . Soviet pressure on the Straits, on Iran, and on
northern Greece had brought the Balkans to the point where a highly possible Soviet
breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration. Like apples in a
barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to
the east. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to
Europe through Italy and France, already threatened by the strongest domestic
Communist parties in Western Europe.
Chomsky remarks that, as Acheson well knew, Soviet pressure on the Straits and Iran
had been withdrawn already and Western control was firmly established. Further, there
was no evidence of Soviet pressure on Northern Greece -- on the contrary, Stalin was
unsympathetic to the Greek leftists (see footnote 1 8 of this chapter).
The degree to which such deceptions are conscious is debatable -- but that issue is
not particularly relevant. As Chomsky notes {Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and
Wang, 1991, pp. 100-102):
We need not suppose that the appeal to alleged security threats is mere deceit.
The authors of [documents such as] N.S.C. 68 may have believed their hysterical
flights of rhetoric, though some understood that the picture they were painting was
"clearer than truth." In a study of policymakers' attitudes, Lars Schoultz concludes
that they were sincere in their beliefs, however outlandish: for example, that Grenada
-- with its population of 1 00,000 and influence over the world nutmeg trade -- posed
such a threat to the United States that "an invasion was essential to U.S. security."
The same may be true of those who, recalling our failure to stop Hitler in time, warned
that we must not make the same mistake with Daniel Ortega [in Nicaragua], poised
for world conquest. And Lyndon Johnson may have been sincere in his lament that
without overwhelming force at its command, the United States would be "easy prey to
any yellow dwarf with a pocket knife," defenseless against the billions of people of the
world who "would sweep over the United States and take what we have. . . ."
In such cases, we need not conclude that we are sampling the productions of
psychotics; that is most unlikely, if only because these delusional systems have an
oddly systematic character and are highly functional, satisfying the requirements
stipulated in the secret documentary record. Nor need we assume conscious deceit.
Rather, it is necessary only to recall the ease with which people can come to believe
whatever it is convenient to believe, however ludicrous it may be, and the filtering
process that excludes those lacking these talents from positions of state and cultural
management. In passing, we may note that while such matters may be of interest to
those entranced by the personalities of leaders, for people concerned to understand
the world, and perhaps to change it, they are of marginal concern at best, on a par
with the importance for economists of the private fantasies of the C.E.O. while he (or
rarely she) acts to maximize profits and market share. Preoccupation with these
matters of tenth-order significance is one of the many devices that serve to divert
attention from the structural and institutional roots of policy, and thus to contribute to
deterring the threat of democracy, which might be aroused by popular understanding
of how the world works.
Chomsky is referring in the above quotation to: Lars Schoultz, National Security and
United States Policy towards Latin America, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1987, pp. 239f; Lyndon Johnson, Congressional Record, House of Representatives,
80th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 94, Part II, Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, March 1 5, 1 948, p. 2883 (the full text of Johnson's first comment: "No matter what
else we have of offensive and defensive weapons, without superior air power America is
a bound and throttled giant; impotent and easy prey to any yellow dwarf with a pocket
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 30
knife"); Lyndon Johnson, "Remarks to American and Korean Servicemen at Camp
Stanley, Korea: November 1 , 1 966," Public Papers of the Presidents, 1966, Book II,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967. The full text of Johnson's second
comment (p. 563):
There are 3 billion people in the world and we have only 200 million of them. We are
outnumbered 15 to 1. If might did make right they would sweep over the United
States and take what we have. We have what they want.
The fact that the "Soviet threat" was consciously used as a false cover for concerns
such as those articulated by Kissinger in the above quotation, however, has been
acknowledged even by those who endorse the policies. See for example commentary in
Stanley Hoffmann, Samuel P. Huntington et al., "Vietnam Reappraised" [colloquium],
International Security, Summer 1981 , pp. 3-26. Huntington, the Eaton Professor of the
Science of Government and Director of the Olin Institute of Strategic Studies at Harvard
University, frankly explained (p. 14):
[Y]ou may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to
create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what
the United States has done ever since the Truman Doctrine.
33. For future Secretary of State Albright's comment, see Robert S. Greenberger,
"New U.N. Resolution Condemning Iraq May Spur Tensions Between U.S., Allies," Wall
Street Journal, October 17, 1994, p. B10. An excerpt:
Ambassador Albright made clear yesterday that, if need be, the administration is
prepared to act alone. "We recognize this area as vital to U.S. national interests and
we will behave, with others, multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we
must," she said, speaking on A.B.C.'s "This Week with David Brinkley."
Julia Preston, "Security Council Reaction Largely Favorable to U.S. Raid," Washington
Post, June 28, 1993, p. A12. An excerpt:
[Ambassador Madeleine Albright commented to the U.N. Security Council:]
"President Clinton has often said we will act multilaterally where we can and
unilaterally where we must. This [i.e. Clinton's 1993 missile attack against Iraq in
retaliation for an alleged Iraqi plot to assassinate former President George Bush] was
a case where we felt we were justified to act alone."
34. On the medical journal articles about Cuba, see for example, Colum Lynch,
"U.S. embargo is blamed for increase in Cuban deaths, illness," Boston Globe,
September 15, 1994, p. 12. An excerpt:
Two years after the United States further tightened trade restrictions on Cuba, the
economic embargo has contributed to an increase in hunger, illness, death and to
one of the world's largest neurological epidemics in the past century, according to
U.S. health experts.
Two independent reports to be published next month in American medical
journals say the 33-year-old embargo has driven the prices of imported medicines
and vitamins well beyond the reach of the cash-strapped country, has prevented
Cuba from gaining access to essential spare parts for life-saving medical equipment,
and has eroded the country's capacity for manufacturing its own medical products.
The upshot has been a rapid decline in the Cuban health care system. Mortality
rates for people 65 and older rose 15 percent from 1989 to 1993. Deaths from easily
treatable afflictions such as pneumonia and influenza have increased sharply, as
have the number of fatal infectious diseases. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 31
"We always talk about Fidel Castro killing people," said Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick,
an anesthesiologist at the University of South Florida who co-authored an article on
Cuba's health crisis to be published in October in the Journal of the Florida Medical
Association. "Well, the fact is that we are killing people." A second report scheduled
in the October issue of the journal Neurology cites the U.S. embargo for exacerbating
the most alarming public health crisis in Cuba in recent memory. In the past two
years, according to the study's author, Dr. Gustavo Roman, the former chief of
neuro-epidemiology at the National Institutes of Health, U.S. restrictions on food,
medicine and access to up-to-date medical databases, have helped to encourage the
spread of a rare neurological disease that has stricken more than 60,000 Cubans,
leaving 200 legally blind. The disease, an optic nerve disorder last observed in
tropical prison camps in Southeast Asia in World War II, is caused by a combination
of poor diet, scarcity of the vitamin thiamine, high consumption of sugar and
overexertion.
See also, Anthony F. Kirkpatrick, "Role of the U.S.A. in shortage of food and
medicine in Cuba," The Lancet (London), Vol. 348, No. 9040, November 30, 1 996, pp.
1489-1491 ; Victoria Brittain, "Children die in agony as U.S. trade ban stifles Cuba,"
Guardian (U.K.), March 7, 1997, p. 3. An excerpt:
The United States trade embargo against Cuba has led to needless deaths, left
hospitalised children lying in agony as essential drugs are denied them, and forced
doctors to work with medical equipment at less than half efficiency because they
have no spare parts for their machinery, according to an American study. Health and
nutrition standards have been devastated by the recent tightening of the 37-year-old
U.S. embargo, which includes food imports, a team of American doctors, research
scientists and lawyers said after a year-long study of the country.
Cubans' daily intake of calories dropped a third between 1989 and 1993, the
American Association for World Health reports [in its study, Denial of Food and
Medicine: The Impact of the U.S. Embargo on Health and Nutrition in Cuba]. ... A
humanitarian catastrophe has been averted, the report says, only by the high priority
the Cuban government has given to health spending, despite a steadily worsening
economic environment. . . . The team visited a paediatric ward which had been
without the nausea-preventing drug, metclopramide HCI, for 22 days. It found that 35
children undergoing chemotherapy were vomiting on average 28 to 30 times a day.
Another girl, aged five, in a cancer ward lacking Implantofix for chemotherapy, was
being treated through her jugular vein because all her other veins had collapsed. She
was in excruciating pain. . . .
Forty-eight per cent of the 215 new drugs being tested in the U.S. are specifically
for treatment of breast cancer. The embargo denies them to Cuban women. "Only
the pre-existing excellence of the system and the extraordinary dedication of the
Cuban medical community have prevented infinitely greater loss of life and suffering,"
the report says. Despite the difficulties, the country's infant mortality rate is still only
half that of Washington D.C., and in access to health services, immunisations and life
expectancy, Cuba compares with Europe.
Chomsky remarks: "These do not count as human rights violations; rather, the public
version is that the goal of the sanctions is to overcome Cuba's human rights violations"
{Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, Boston: South End, 2000, p. 147).
35. On U.S. corporate concern over the embargo and foreign companies'
willingness to violate it, see for example, Gail DeGeorge, "Almost Tasting Trade: U.S.
companies want to be ready for post-embargo Cuba -- whenever," Business Week,
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 32
September 19, 1994, p. 32; Gail DeGeorge, "Fidel's End Run Around Uncle Sam: Cuba
is attracting more foreign investors -- despite the embargo," Business Week, May 9,
1994, p. 47.
36. One reference was found in the U.S. press to the roundups of Panamanian
union leaders after the invasion -- in the 25th and 26th paragraphs of an article in the
Boston Globe. See Diego Ribadeneira, "Resentment of U.S. spreads in Panama City,"
Boston Globe, January 1 , 1 990, p. 1 . The reference:
Marco Gandasegui, director of the Center for Latin American Studies, a research
institute [in Panama, stated:] "With thousands of American troops in the streets, you
aren't going to see people staging anti-American demonstrations." But in what was
perhaps the first public anti-American display, several dozen Panamanians
demonstrated Thursday against U.S. soldiers as they arrested two leaders of the
telecommunications union. They were suspected of possessing arms but none were
found. They were arrested anyway, because, according to U.S. diplomats, they
were on a list of several hundred people whom the Endara government seeks to
detain.
As for why the people on the list - mostly political activists and labor leaders ~
were wanted, a senior official in the U.S. Embassy said, "We weren't given any
details, just that the Endara government wanted us to get them. They're bad guys of
some sort, I guess."
For reports about the Panama invasion and its aftermath outside of the mainstream
U.S. press, see for example, Ramsey Clark [former U.S. Attorney General], The Fire This
Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1992. An excerpt (pp.
126-127):
I flew to Panama on the first day commercial flights were permitted to operate after
the U.S. invasion. . . . Surveying devastated neighborhoods; finding a 120 x 18-foot
mass grave; talking with Red Cross, hospital, and morgue workers, and religious,
human rights, labor, student, and other leaders, I readily counted hundreds of
civilians dead. The press, however, initially asked no questions about civilian
casualties. When eventually prodded in early January, General Stiner repeatedly
stated that 83 civilians were killed, and the media faithfully reported that number. A
press conference I held before leaving Panama, like a number held thereafter by a
private commission formed to investigate and report on Panama, was virtually
ignored by the mass media. Estimates of casualties from that commission and many
other religious, human rights, and health groups ranged from 1 ,000 to 7,000 dead. By
1992 a consensus was emerging around 4,000 Panamanians killed. Yet the media
used only the final Pentagon figure of 345 Panamanian deaths when it explained why
angry crowds disrupted President Bush's visit to Panama in June 1 992.
Linda Hossie, "Skepticism growing in Panama over official invasion casualty toll," Globe
& Mail (Toronto), January 8, 1 990, p. A9. An excerpt:
Sources in Panama City tell stories of hundreds of Panamanian soldiers gunned
down from U.S. helicopters after fleeing their headquarters in Old Panama or while
trapped in a dead-end street near Fort Amador. Others claim that a large number of
bodies were burned on a city beach and that as many as 600 people are buried in
mass graves. . . . Virtually all the Panamanians interviewed agreed that the vast
majority of the dead are civilians.
Alexander Cockburn, "Beneath a peak in Darien: the conquest of Panama," Nation,
January 29, 1990, p. 114. An excerpt:
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 33
Roberto Arosemena, a professor of sociology well known in Panama for his
fifteen-year nonviolent resistance to military dictatorship [said] . . . U.S. troops . . .
had conducted rigorous searches, usually destroying property and acting without
regard for children and old people. Now, he said, there is an extreme display of U.S.
forces throughout the city. They patrol neighborhoods in eight-to-fifteen-person units,
carrying combat rifles. When Panamanians accompany them, it is always in a ratio
of the Panamanian to two G.l.s, and the Panamanians never carry anything heavier
than a pistol.
According to Arosemena, about 1 ,200 people are currently detained in camps in
the U.S. military compound. He spoke to one man who had been held, a civilian
former government worker, who told him that detainees were bound hand and foot,
eyes blindfolded and mouths bandaged. They were loaded into trucks and when they
reached the installation they were thrown out, some of them suffering injuries. Then
they were interrogated by U.S. military personnel.
John Weeks and Phil Gunson, Panama: Made in the U.S.A., London: Latin America
Bureau, 1 991 , especially chs. 1 and 5.
37. For the New York Times's report that Quayle did not tour El Chorrillo, see
Robert Pear, "Quayle Gets Warm Welcome in Panama," New York Times, January 29,
1 990, p. A3. The exact words:
Pro-American sentiment is expressed more forcefully by affluent and middle-class
Panamanians than by those with lower incomes. Mr. Quayle did not visit
impoverished neighborhoods like Chorillo, where houses were destroyed in fighting
after the American invasion. Nor did he visit people made homeless by fighting.
38. For Beamish's article, see Rita Beamish, "Quayle Gets Assurances of
Panamanian Drug-Money Reform," A.P., January 29, 1 990 (Westlaw database # 1 990
WL 5988786). The passage reads:
Before leaving Panama City, Quayle took a driving tour of the impoverished Chorrillo
neighborhood. Several blocks were leveled by fire and bombing during the U.S.
attack, including the headquarters of Noriega's Panamanian Defense Force. As his
motorcade slowly drove by the area, onlookers gathered in groups and peered out
windows, watching in stony silence. Their reaction was in stark contrast to the
enthusiastic cheering Sunday from a well-dressed congregation at a Roman Catholic
church Quayle attended in another neighborhood.
39. There have been, in fact, two references in the major U.S. press to Panama's
annual day of mourning -- one in the "Metro" section of the Los Angeles Times, and the
other in a story picked up from the French wire-service Agence France-Presse and
published in the Chicago Sun-Times. See "A Troubled Panama One Year After," Los
Angeles Times, December 21 , 1990, p. B6; James Aparicio, A.F.P., "Endara's status
slips in Panama," Chicago Sun-Times, December 22, 1991 , p. 46.
A few local papers in the United States also have mentioned Panama's annual day
of mourning. See for example, "Panama Notes Invasion Anniversary," Courier-Journal
(Louisville, KY), December 21 , 1 990, p. A1 5 ("The government dubbed the date a 'day of
national reflection,' while the families of Panamanians killed in the invasion set a 'grand
black march' of protest for the evening"); A.P., "Mourning In Panama," Sacramento Bee
(CA), December 21 , 1 993, p. A20.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 34
40. On the Endara government's statement about the U.S. "military occupation,"
see for example, "News in Brief: Panama; Two Scathing Reports," Central America
Report (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Inforpress Centroamericana), Vol. XXI, No. 4,
February 4, 1 994, p. 8. An excerpt:
In surprisingly strong terms for a government office, CONADEHUPA [the
Panamanian governmental National Human Rights Commission] argues that the
rights to self-determination and sovereignty of the Panamanian people continue to be
violated by the "state of occupation by a foreign army." Among violations committed
by the U.S. army, CONADEHUPA lists the campaign Strong Roads 93, air force
flights in different provinces, the participation of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (D.E.A.) in search and seizure operations, a D.E.A. agent's assault on
a Panamanian journalist and incidents of attacks on Panamanian citizens by U.S.
military personnel.
41 . On the international organizations' actions against the U.S. invasion and
Panama's occupation, see for example, "Panama ousted from the Group of Eight,"
Central America Report (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Inforpress Centroamericana), Vol.
XVII, No. 13, April 6, 1990, p. 99. An excerpt:
President Guillermo Endara's government receives one of its worst diplomatic
setbacks since taking office, as the Group of Eight [what are considered the major
Latin American democracies] formally ousts Panama from the organization, claiming
the Endara government is illegal and demanding new elections. . . .
At the sixth meeting of the Group of Eight on March 30, foreign ministers from
seven countries (Panama was suspended in 1988) issued their most forceful dictum
against Panama to date. Basically they agreed on three points: Panama's permanent
separation from the G-8, a call for immediate presidential elections and the limiting of
activities by U.S. troops. . . . The final resolution noted that "the process of
democratic legitimation in Panama requires popular consideration without foreign
interference, that guarantees the full right of the people to freely choose their
governments. . . ." The G-8 suggests that the U.S. military is operating outside of its
mandate, affecting Panama's sovereignty and independence as well as the legality of
the Endara government.
John Weeks and Phil Gunson, Panama: Made in the U.S.A., London: Latin America
Bureau, 1991 (on the U.S. invasion's illegality under international law, see Appendix 1).
An excerpt (p. 92):
Regional bodies were unanimous in their condemnation of the invasion and their calls
for fresh elections. The Organization of American States approved a resolution
"deeply deploring" the U.S. military intervention, with only the U.S. itself voting
against.
See also, Charles Maechling [former senior State Department official and professor of
international law], "Washington's Illegal Invasion," Foreign Policy, Summer 1990, pp.
113-131.
42. On Noriega being on the U.S. payroll during the height of his narcotics
trafficking, see for example, John Weeks and Andrew Zimbalist, "The failure of
intervention in Panama," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 1 1 , No. 1 , January 1 989, pp. 3f. An
excerpt (pp. 8-11):
It is generally recognised, indeed common knowledge, that Noriega enjoyed close
relations with agencies of the United States government, particularly the Central
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 35
Intelligence Agency, but also the United States military. The role of Noriega as a
U.S. informant and conduit for information began in the late 1960s, when he began
serving as Director of Intelligence for the Panamanian National Guard, and continued
uninterrupted until quite recently, despite allegedly strong evidence of his involvement
in illegal activities associated with the drug trade. . . . [I]t is generally agreed . . . that
the U.S. government was aware of these accusations long before it chose to rid
Panama of Noriega: the drug charge apparently had been known almost twenty
years previously; the election-rigging occurred in 1984 and the U.S. embassy in
Panama was well aware of it; the murder in question (of Hugo Spadafora) happened
in 1985. . . . [A]s Senator Paul Simon pointed out on 28 April 1988 to the U.S.
Senate, "We tolerated [Noriega's] drug dealings because he was helping the
Contras." And according to the February 1988 congressional testimony of Jose
Blandon (Noriega's erstwhile consul in New York), Noriega received a monthly
stipend from the C.I.A. . . .
Noriega's drug dealings did not present an insurmountable obstacle to
cooperation with him in the view of U.S. officials. In 1986, after briefing the Attorney-
General, Edwin Meese, about his investigation into drug-trafficking in Central
America, U.S. Department of Justice Attorney for Miami, Jeffrey Kellner, was told by
Meese to sidetrack his inquiry for political reasons. Other actions of the U.S.
government itself suggest that it was not intensely concerned about the General's
drug-related activities until after it had decided he had to go. As surprising as it may
seem in retrospect, in May 1986 John Lawn, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Agency, sent a letter to Noriega expressing "deep appreciation for [your] vigorous
anti-drug policy." And in May 1987 (a year after the mid-1986 newspaper revelations
about Noriega's drug involvement) Meese, the highest-ranking law enforcement
official in the United States, congratulated the Panamanian government on its
cooperation in joint U.S.-Panamanian anti-drug activities.
Frederick Kempe, "Ties That Blind: U.S. Taught Noriega To Spy, but the Pupil Had His
Own Agenda," Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1989, p. 1. An excerpt:
Before American foreign policy set out to destroy Noriega, it helped create him
out of the crucible of Panama's long history of conspirators and pirates. ... In 1 960,
for example, when Mr. Noriega was both a cadet at an elite military academy in Peru
and a spy-in-training for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, he was detained by
Lima authorities for allegedly raping and savagely beating a prostitute, according to a
U.S. Embassy cable from that period. The woman had nearly died. But U.S.
intelligence, rather than rein in or cut loose its new spy, merely filed the report away.
Mr. Noriega's tips on emerging leftists at his school were deemed more important to
U.S. interests. ... Mr. Noriega's relationship to American intelligence agencies
became contractual in either 1966 or 1967, intelligence officials say. His
commanding officer at the Chiriqui Province garrison, Major Omar Torrijos, gave him
an intriguing assignment: Mr. Noriega would organize the province's first intelligence
service. The spy network would serve two clients: the Panamanian government, by
monitoring political opponents in the region, and the U.S., by tracking the growing
Communist influence in the unions organized at United Fruit Co.'s banana plantations
in Bocas del Toros and Puerto Armuelles. . . .
During the Nixon administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration became
dismayed at the extent of the G-2's [Panama's spy service, in which Noriega was
chief of intelligence,] connections to arrested drug traffickers. . . . [After a suspension
during the Carter administration, the] Reagan administration also put Mr. Noriega's G-
2 back on the U.S. payroll. Payments averaged nearly $200,000 a year from the
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 36
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the C.I. A. Although working for U.S.
intelligence, Mr. Noriega was hardly helping the U.S. exclusively. He allegedly
entered into Panama's first formal business arrangement with Colombian drug
bosses, according to Floyd Carlton, a pilot who once worked for Mr. Noriega and who
testified before the U.S. grand jury in Miami that would ultimately indict the
Panamanian on drug charges. . . . [H]e helped steal the May 1984 Panamanian
elections for the ruling party. But just one month later, he also contributed $1 00,000
to a Contra leader, according to documents released for Oliver North's criminal trial in
Washington D.C. ... Mr. Noriega was accused of ordering in 1985 the beheading of
Hugo Spadafora, his most outspoken political opponent and the first man to publicly
finger Mr. Noriega on drug trafficking charges. . . . [T]he unfolding Iran-Contra
scandal took away Mr. Noriega's insurance policy [with the U.S. government]. . . .
During negotiations with American officials in May 1 988 over proposals to drop the
U.S. [drug crime] indictments in exchange for his resignation, Mr. Noriega often
asked almost plaintively how the Americans, whom he had helped for so many years,
could turn against him.
John Dinges, "Two Noriegas: Trafficker, Law Enforcer," Op-Ed, New York Times,
January 1 2, 1 990, p. A35 (noting that all but one of the drug charges in Noriega's 1 988
indictment related to activities that took place before 1 984, when he was a favored U.S.
client); Kevin Buckley, Panama: The Whole Story, New York: Simon and Schuster,
1 991 , especially pp. 1 8-1 9, 40-67; Seymour M. Hersh, "Panama Strongman Said To
Trade In Drugs, Arms and Illicit Money," New York Times, June 1 2, 1 986, p. A1 ;
Seymour M. Hersh, "U.S. Aides In 72 Weighed Killing Officer Who Now Leads
Panama," New York Times, June 13, 1986, p. A1 (according to a named U.S. official, as
early as the Nixon administration in 1 972 the U.S. had "hard intelligence about the
extent of General Noriega's involvement in drug trafficking").
Chomsky explains the background of Noriega's quick fall from grace {Deterring
Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1991, pp. 158-159):
The reasons for the invasion of Panama were not difficult to discern. . . . One black
mark against Noriega was his support for the Contadora peace process for Central
America, to which the U.S. was strongly opposed. His commitment to the war
against Nicaragua was in question, and when the Iran-Contra affair broke, his
usefulness was at an end. On New Year's Day 1990, administration of the Panama
Canal was to pass largely into Panamanian hands, and a few years later the rest was
to follow, according to the Canal Treaty. A major oil pipeline is 60 percent owned by
Panama. Clearly, traditional U.S. clients had to be restored to power, and there was
not much time to spare. With January 1 approaching, the London Economist noted,
"the timing was vital" and a new government had to be installed. [See "Gunning for
Noriega," Economist (London), December 23, 1989, p. 29; Martha Hamilton, "Canal
Closing Underscores U.S. Concern: Waterway Shuts Down for First Time in Its 75-
Year History," Washington Post, December 21 , 1 989, p. A31 .]
43. For McGovern's Op-Ed, see George McGovern, "A Betrayal of American
Principles," Washington Post, January 16, 1990, p. A23. An excerpt:
The night after U.S. forces invaded Panama seeking to spread democracy and
capture Gen. Noriega I was invited to give my reaction on network television. I
begged off, partly because of family obligations and partly because I regarded the
invasion as a mistake that I was reluctant to criticize while American forces were still
positioning themselves. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 37
Like Grenada in 1983 and a dozen other 20th century American invasions of
defenseless little countries to the south of us who needed to be taught proper
conduct, the invasion of Panama seems to be good for public morale. . . .
Nonetheless, this invasion was illegal and mistaken on all important counts. History,
I believe, will so judge it, possibly in the near future. The president acted in violation
of international law, of the U.N. Charter and of the Charter of the Organization of
American States -- to say nothing of our own Constitution.
44. On the scale and nature of the U.S. public relations industry's propaganda
efforts, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 51 and 75.
45. On the U.S. military occupation of Panama at the time of the invasion and its
"dry runs" a few days beforehand, see for example, Bill Baskervill, "Former Combat
Commanders Critique Panama Invasion," A.P., February 25, 1990 (Westlaw database #
1 990 WL 5992986). An excerpt:
The Dec. 20 assault on Panama that ousted dictator Manuel Noriega was
planned and polished for months. The 13,000 U.S. troops based in Panama were at
well-stocked bases and provided intelligence on the Panamanian Defense Forces
and protection for the 14,000 invading troops. . . .
"It was a very, very easy operation, a very, very soft target," said [Retired
Colonel David Hackworth, one of the nation's most decorated soldiers]. ... "I feel the
operation could have been done by 1 00 Special Forces guys who could have gotten
Noriega. This big operation was a Pentagon attempt to impress Congress just when
they're starting to cut back on the military. . . ." [T]he principal flaw in the invasion
was the loss of surprise. Huge C-141 transport planes were landing at 10-minute
intervals at Howard Air Force Base in Panama City as the invasion hour approached.
William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War
II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, ch. 50. An excerpt (pp. 310-31 1):
For months ... the United States had been engaging in military posturing in Panama.
U.S. troops, bristling with assault weapons, would travel in fast-moving convoys,
escorted by armored vehicles, looking for all the world as if they planned to attack
someone. U.S. Marines descended from helicopters by rope to practice emergency
evacuation of the embassy. Panamanian military camps were surrounded and their
gates rattled amid insults by U.S. servicemen. In one episode, more than 1,000 U.S.
military personnel conducted an exercise that appeared to be a rehearsal of a kidnap
raid, as helicopters and jet aircraft flew low over Noriega's house and American
raiders splashed ashore nearby.
For some insight into the decision to use super-advanced technology during the
invasion, see for example, John D. Morrocco, "F-1 1 7 A Fighter Used in Combat For First
Time in Panama," Aviation Week and Space Technology, January 1 , 1 990, pp. 32f. An
excerpt:
The U.S. Air Force employed the Lockheed F-117A stealth fighter in combat for
the first time in support of an air drop of Army Rangers against a Panama Defense
Forces installation at Rio Hato during the American invasion of Panama. . . . There
were conflicting reports as to the rationale for employing the sophisticated aircraft,
which cost nearly $50 million apiece, to conduct what appeared to be a simple
operation. . . . The Panamanian air force has no fighter aircraft, and no military
aircraft are stationed permanently at Rio Hato. . . .
Franz R. Manfredi ... an aeronautical engineering consultant and charter
operator based in Panama City, said he was astonished to hear the U.S. Air Force
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 38
has employed the F-117A on the mission against Rio Hato. "They could have
bombed it with any other aircraft and not been noticed," he said. Manfredi said there
is no radar at the Rio Hato airport, which operates only during the daylight hours. . . .
Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney, who visited Rio Hato on Dec. 25 and
observed the craters left by the 2000-lb. bombs, said, "the reason we used that
particular weapon is because of its great accuracy. . . ." By demonstrating the F-
1 1 7A's capability to operate in low-intensity conflicts, as well as its intended mission
to attack heavily defended Soviet targets, the operation can be used by the Air Force
to help justify the huge investment made in stealth technology ... to an increasingly
skeptical Congress.
For a report on the Stealth fighter's actual performance, see Michael R. Gordon,
"Inquiry Into Stealth's Performance In Panama Is Ordered by Cheney," New York Times,
April 11,1 990, p. A1 9. An excerpt:
Senior Pentagon officials disclosed last week that the [Stealth fighter] plane's first
combat mission in Panama was marked by pilot error and a failure, by hundreds of
yards, to hit a critical target. The disclosure was embarrassing for the Pentagon,
which has promoted the radar-eluding planes as highly precise weapons. . . .
The plane's mission in the Dec. 20 invasion of Panama was to drop bombs close
enough to two barracks at the Rio Hato military base to stun Panamanian soldiers,
without killing them. Mr. Cheney, based on Air Force information, initially said the two
fighters had delivered their bombs with pinpoint accuracy. But senior Pentagon
officials said last week that one of the planes had missed its target by more than 300
yards. . . . Defense Secretary Cheney ordered an inquiry. In the months after the
invasion, the Air Force publicly rejected suggestions that the mission had not been
properly executed, despite some reports to the contrary.
46. For one acknowledgment of the popular constraints on invasions by the Bush
administration at the time of the Gulf War, see chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnote 58. For
other examples, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnotes 4 and 5.
47. On the change in attitude of sectors of the Church towards the poor of Latin
America, see for example, Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People: United States Involvement
in the Rise of Fascism, Torture, and Murder and the Persecution of the Catholic Church
in Latin America, New York: Doubleday, 1980; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions:
The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1 983 (2nd revised and
expanded edition 1993), pp. 218-225. On the U.S. response, see chapter 2 of U.P. and
its footnote 1 5; and footnote 48 of this chapter.
Note that it was not "Communism" that caused the U.S. onslaught, but the threat of
reform. As Chomsky emphasizes {The Washington Connection And Third World
Fascism - The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, Boston: South End, 1 979,
p. 260):
It cannot be overstressed that while the church increasingly calls for major social
changes, the vast bulk of its efforts have been directed toward the protection of the
most elemental human rights - to vote, to have the laws enforced without favor, to be
free from physical abuse, and to be able to organize, assemble, and petition for
betterment.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 39
48. For the Americas Watch study, see Americas Watch, El Salvador's Decade of
Terror: Human Rights Since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991 . An excerpt (pp. ix-x):
The murder of Archbishop Romero in 1 980 and the massacre of six prominent Jesuit
intellectuals, their housekeeper, and her daughter in 1 989 bracket a tragic and violent
decade in Salvadoran history. The fact that the Jesuit murders were carried out by
officers and troops from the elite Atlacatl Battalion, created, trained, and armed by the
United States, makes clear that U.S. assistance is not buying human rights
protection for the people of El Salvador. In both cases, and in thousands of others in
the intervening years, U.S. officials clung to the notion that the military was not
responsible. In the Jesuit case, they discounted reports of military involvement for
two months, until the weight of the evidence made the army's role impossible to
ignore. It is almost certain that the murder of Father Ignacio Ellacuna and the others
was engineered at the highest level of the army, and it is absolutely certain that the
high command acted repeatedly to cover up its involvement, sometimes with the
collusion of U.S. Embassy officials.
49. On Saudi Arabia's human rights violations, see for example, Amnesty
International, The 1996 Report on Human Rights Around the World, New York: Hunter
House, 1996. An excerpt (pp. 266, 265-266):
Amnesty International continued to express concern about the detention of people
for the peaceful expression of their political or religious beliefs. . . . New information
came to light about the torture and ill-treatment of detainees in 1 994. The victims
included political and criminal prisoners. The most common methods of torture used
included falaqa (beatings on the soles of the feet), beatings, suspension by the
wrists, and electric shocks. Among the victims was Gulam Mustafa, a Pakistani
national, who was reportedly subjected to electric shocks and had a metal stick
inserted into his anus while held in a detention centre for drug offenses in Jeddah in
May 1994. ... Up to 200 other political detainees arrested in 1993 and 1994 .. .
continued to be held without charge or trial and without access to any legal
assistance. . . .
The judicial punishments of amputation and flogging continued to be imposed for a
wide range of offenses, including theft, consumption of alcohol and sexual offenses.
At least nine people . . . had their right hands amputated. . . . They had been
convicted on charges of theft, burglary and robbery. The punishment of flogging was
widely used. . . . There was a sharp increase in the number of executions, the vast
majority carried out by public beheading. . . . Defendants facing the death penalty
have no right to be formally represented by defence lawyers during their trials.
Confessions, even when obtained under torture, are apparently accepted in court as
evidence and may be the sole evidence on which conviction is based.
50. On Hekmatyar's terror, narco-trafficking, and U.S. support, see for example,
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The C.I.A., Drugs and the Press,
London: Verso, 1 998, ch. 1 1 . An excerpt (pp. 255-256, 263-264):
The mujahedin were scarcely fighting for freedom ... but instead to impose one
of the most repressive brands of Islamic fundamentalism known to the world,
barbarous, ignorant and notably cruel to women. . . . Though the U.S. press . . .
portrayed the mujahedin as a unified force of freedom fighters, the fact (unsurprising
to anyone with an inkling of Afghan history) was that the mujahedin consisted of at
least seven warring factions, all battling for territory and control of the opium trade.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 40
The I.S.I. [Pakistan's secret police, a U.S. asset in the region,] gave the bulk of the
arms -- at one count 60 percent -- to a particularly fanatical fundamentalist and
woman-hater Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who made his public debut at the University of
Kabul by killing a leftist student. In 1972 Hekmatyar fled to Pakistan, where he
became an agent of the I.S.I. He urged his followers to throw acid in the faces of
women not wearing the veil, kidnapped rival leaders, and built up his C.I.A.-furnished
arsenal against the day the Soviets would leave and the war for the mastery of
Afghanistan would truly break out. Using his weapons to get control of the opium
fields, Hekmatyar and his men would urge the peasants, at gun point, to increase
production. They would collect the raw opium and bring it back to Hekmatyar's six
heroin factories in the town of Koh-i-Soltan. . . .
American D.E.A. agents were fully apprised of the drug running of the mujahedin
in concert with Pakistani intelligence and military leaders. In 1983 the D.E.A. 's
congressional liaison, David Melocik, told a congressional committee, "You can say
the rebels make their money off the sale of opium. There's no doubt about it. These
rebels keep their cause going through the sale of opium." But talk about "the cause"
depending on drug sales was nonsense at that particular moment. The C.I. A. was
paying for everything regardless.
Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics Of Heroin: C.I. A. Complicity In The Global Drug Trade,
Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill, 1991, pp. 445-460, especially pp. 449-452; Human Rights
Watch, Human Rights Watch World Report 1993, New York, December 1 992, pp. 1 51 -
153.
51 . On U.S. moves to undermine Aristide following his election, see for example,
Special Delegation of the National Labor Committee Education Fund in Support of
Worker and Human Rights in Central America, Haiti After the Coup: Sweatshop or Real
Development?, New York, April 1 993. An excerpt (pp. 22, 25, 27):
In the middle of the constitutional government's short reign, U.S. A.I.D. [the
Agency for International Development] was declaring that "signals" from the Aristide
Administration "to the business community have been mixed." U.S. A.I.D. went on
the attack saying that, "decisions have been made which could be highly detrimental
to economic growth, for example in the areas of labor and foreign exchange controls."
U.S. A.I.D. was displeased with the fact that the democratically elected government
wanted to place temporary price controls on basic foodstuffs so the people could
afford to eat. . . .
Under the Aristide government . . . U.S. A.I.D., which had spent tens of millions of
U.S. tax dollars since 1980 to foster offshore investment in Haiti's low wage
assembly sector, stopped promoting investment. . . . After 67.5 percent of the Haitian
people had voted for change, U.S. A.I.D. worked with the Haitian business elite to
keep things the same. As the Aristide government came into office, U.S. A.I.D.
allocated $7.7 million to Prominex [a front group for business organizations that
received 99 percent of its funding from U.S. A.I.D.] ... $12 million in loans to
business, and $7 million to foster democracy "from a business perspective" - a total
of $26.7 million.
Deidre McFadyen, Pierre LaRamee and the North American Congress on Latin
America, eds., Haiti: Dangerous Crossroads, Boston: South End, 1995, ch. 6. An
excerpt (p. 190):
An April 1992 report on Haiti from the Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center
details how "N.E.D. [the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy] and A.I.D. have
tried to craft a carefully tailored electoral democracy based on conservative interest
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes ~ 41
groups. . . ." After President Aristide's victory, support for political projects in Haiti
soared with the addition of a five-year, $24-million package for "democracy
enhancement." The aim of the program was to strengthen conservative forces within
the legislature, the local government structures and civil society at large. And, as
summed up by the Resource Center report, "to unravel the power and influence of
grassroots organizations that formed the popular base of the Aristide government."
The U.S. government went to special lengths to counter the demands of Haiti's labor
movement. According to research conducted by the National Labor Committee,
"U.S. A.I.D. used U.S. tax dollars to actively oppose a minimum-wage increase from
$0.33 to $0.50 an hour proposed by the Aristide government."
See also, William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since
World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, ch. 55. An excerpt (pp. 373-374):
[T]he National Endowment for Democracy - which was set up to do overtly, and
thus more "respectably," some of what the C.I.A. used to do covertly - . . .in
conjunction with the Agency for International Development (A.I.D.), was busy in Haiti.
It gave $189,000 to several civic groups that included the Haitian Center for the
Defense of Rights and Freedom, headed by Jean-Jacques Honorat. Shortly after
Aristide's ouster, Honorat became the prime minister in the coup government. . . .
In the years prior to the coup, the N.E.D. also gave more than $500,000 to the
Haitian Institute for Research and Development (I.H.R.E.D.). This organization
played a very partisan role in the 1990 elections when it was allied with U.S.-favorite
Marc Bazin, former World Bank executive, and helped him create his coalition. . . .
I.H.R.E.D. was led by Leopold Berlanger who, in 1993, supported the junta's sham
election aimed at ratifying the prime ministership of Bazin, Honorat's successor and a
political associate of Berlanger. Another recipient of N.E.D. largesse was Radio
Soleil, run by the Catholic Church in a manner calculated to not displease the
dictatorship of the day. During the 1991 coup ~ according to the Rev. Hugo Triest, a
former station director - the station refused to air a message from Aristide. The
N.E.D. has further reduced the U.S. Treasury by grants to the union association
Federation des Ouvriers Syndiques, founded in 1984 with Duvalier's approval, so
that Haiti, which previously had crushed union-organizing efforts, would qualify for the
U.S. Caribbean Basin Initiative economic package. But despite its name and
unceasing rhetoric, the National Endowment for Democracy did not give a dollar to
any of the grassroots organizations that eventually merged to form Aristide's
coalition.
52. On the successes of the Aristide regime before the coup, see for example,
Special Delegation of the National Labor Committee Education Fund in Support of
Worker and Human Rights in Central America, Haiti After the Coup: Sweatshop or Real
Development?, New York, April 1 993. An excerpt (pp. 35-36):
In July 1991 , the Consultative Group for Haiti - composed of 1 1 countries and 10
international donors ~ met at the World Bank's office in Paris. ... In what the Inter-
American Development Bank (I.D.B.) referred to as a "show of support by the
international community," the Consultative Group committed more than $440 million in
aid to the Aristide government. According to [the World Bank's Caribbean Director
Yoshiaki] Abe, the donors strongly endorsed the new government's investment
program. . . . [Qjuoting the I.D.B.: "In February 1991, when Haiti's first democratically
elected government took office, the economy was in an unprecedented state of
disintegration." But "the Aristide administration acted quickly to restore order to the
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 42
government's finances." In the eight months before the coup the Aristide
government:
- Reduced the country's foreign debt by $1 30 million.
- Increased its foreign exchange reserves from near zero to $12 million.
- Increased government revenues "owing to the success of the tax collection
measures and the government's anticorruption campaign."
- "To curb expenditures, the government streamlined the bloated public service
and eliminated fictitious positions in government and government enterprise."
- Made significant inroads to curb the enormous flow of contraband trade, while
lowering duties and simplifying the customs system.
- Brought "the inflation rate down dramatically from 26 percent in December 1 990
to 1 1 percent in August 1 991 ."
- Established a "uniform exchange rate system at the market rate."
- Signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
Deidre McFadyen, Pierre LaRamee and the North American Congress on Latin
America, eds., Haiti: Dangerous Crossroads, Boston: South End, 1995, p. 104 (reporting
that there was "a 75% reduction in human rights abuses during Aristide's seven months
in office"); Editorial, "For Haitians, Cruelty and Hope," New York Times, January 17,
1 993, section 4, p. 1 6 ("During the seven months of [Aristide's] presidency in 1 991 , the
flow of boat people all but dried up," but after the coup the mass exodus of refugees from
Haiti resumed).
The U.S. government sought to portray Aristide's short time in power very
differently. See for example, Amy Wilentz, "Haiti: The September Coup,"
Reconstruction, Vol. 1 , No. 4, 1992. An excerpt (pp. 102-103):
Under Aristide's administration . . . military and paramilitary human-rights
violations came to a virtual halt. . . . Since Aristide's overthrow, international
discussion - briefly enthusiastic on his behalf - has focused on alleged flaws in his
human-rights record. The United States State Department, according to the New
York Times, circulated a thick notebook filled with alleged human rights violations.
Inaccurate statistics about Aristide's human rights record were reportedly compiled
and circulated by CHADEL, the human-rights organization of Jean-Jacques Honorat,
now the prime minister of Haiti's illegal and unconstitutional interim government.
International human-rights organizations like Amnesty International, Americas Watch,
the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, and the Washington Office on Haiti have
all found, however, that of the five presidents who have held power since Jean-
Claude Duvalier fell in 1 986, Aristide had by far the best human-rights record.
Oddly, this is the first time in the post-Duvalier era that the United States
government has been so deeply concerned with human rights and the rule of law in
Haiti. Under the previous four presidents (three of them Duvalieriste, two of them
military men), the State Department did not circulate notebooks of violations; rather, it
occasionally argued for the reinstatement of aid - including military aid - based on
unsubstantiated human-rights improvements.
Linda Diebel, "The generals knew all along they would win," Toronto Star, November
14, 1993, p. E6. An excerpt:
[A] dossier on Aristide [claiming] "he's a psychotic manic depressive with
homicidal and necrophiliac tendencies . . ." turned into the much-publicized Aristide
report by the Central Intelligence Agency [which asserted a list of Aristide's
supposed crimes while in office]. . . .
Three days after the coup that toppled Aristide, he's in exile in Venezuela. The
U.S. publicly supports his return. Yet American Ambassador Alvin Adams summons
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 43
reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post and other major U.S.
outlets to private meetings and briefs them on Aristide's alleged crimes. The main
line is that he's unstable, and wanted to see his enemies die with burning tires around
their necks. Much of the evidence was provided by [the dossier].
53. For the New York Times's article on the embargo "exemption," see Barbara
Crossette, "U.S. Plans to Sharpen Focus Of Its Sanctions Against Haiti," New York
Times, February 5, 1 992, p. A8. An excerpt:
The Bush Administration said today that it would modify its embargo against
Haiti's military Government to punish anti-democratic forces and ease the plight of
workers who lost jobs because of the ban on trade. . . . [T]he State Department
announced that the Administration would be "fine tuning" its economic sanctions. . . .
The Treasury Department would also grant licenses to American companies to
resume assembling goods in Haiti for re-export, the State Department said. . . .
The decision to modify the United States embargo is the latest in a series of
Administration moves that have been alternatively tough or concessionary as
Washington tries to stem the flow of Haitian refugees while looking for more effective
ways to hasten the collapse of what the Administration calls an illegal Government in
Haiti.
A more straightforward account appeared in the Times a few days later. See Howard W.
French, "Democracy Push In Haiti Blunted: Leaders of Coup Gleeful After U.S. Loosens
Its Embargo and Returns Refugees," New York Times, February 7, 1992, p. A5. An
excerpt:
With ... the relaxation of a United States embargo against Haiti, the momentum
of a four-month-old effort to restore democracy in this country appears to have been
badly blunted. ... On Tuesday, when Washington announced that it would begin
selectively removing sanctions against industrial concerns to help revive a choking
economy, the mood of optimism among many who supported the coup turned to
bravado and frankly expressed glee. At ceremonies Wednesday, where officers
carrying ivory-handled swords saluted the promotion of the army commander, Raoul
Cedras, to the rank of lieutenant general amid the boom of a 21 -gun salute, the new
mood of confidence was everywhere in evidence. . . .
United States diplomats denied that the total embargo was being lifted or that
Haiti's coup was being recognized. But they said the human and economic costs
that a blanket embargo had caused were too high for the meager results the
sanctions had produced, bringing the provisional Government to the negotiating table.
54. The fact that U.S. trade with Haiti rose dramatically under Clinton despite the
"embargo" was reported in the international business press. See George Graham,
"Disgruntled Washington backs away from Aristide," Financial Times (London),
February 19, 1994, p. 3. An excerpt:
U.S. imports from Haiti rose by more than half last year [1993], to Dollars 154m,
thanks in part to an exemption granted by the U.S. Treasury for imports of goods
assembled in Haiti from U.S. parts. [Exports also rose to $221 million]. . . . The
Clinton administration still formally declares its support for Mr. Aristide, but scarcely
disguises its wish for a leader more accommodating to the military . . . [while]
European diplomats in Washington are scathing in their comments on what they see
as the United States's abdication of leadership over Haiti.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 44
55. For some of the ways in which a "message" was sent to the Haitian coup
leaders by the U.S. government, see for example, Robert S. Greenberger, "Would-Be
Dictators Are Watching to See If O.A.S. Can Restore Democracy in Haiti," Wall Street
Journal, January 1 3, 1 992, p. A1 1 . An excerpt:
Last fall the [Bush] administration said it would consider freezing any U.S. assets
of military officers who participated in the coup, and of their wealthy Haitian backers .
. . [and] was considering temporarily lifting U.S. visas for these people, who travel
frequently to the U.S. to shop or visit relatives. But neither step was taken. . . .
Mr. Torricelli [Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western
Hemisphere Affairs] and others concede that one difficulty in getting support for
stronger action against Haiti has been Mr. Aristide's record. He was overwhelmingly
elected in Haiti's first free election and is immensely popular with the poor. But his
fiery rhetoric sometimes incited class violence. . . . [T]he economic embargo . . . has
been a blunt instrument, punishing mostly the urban poor and having minimal impact
on the privileged.
Lee Hockstader, "Haitian Opposition Feels Betrayed," Guardian Weekly (U.K.), February
16, 1992, p. 17. An excerpt:
When Washington unilaterally last week eased its tough economic embargo --
which had been urged by the O.A.S. [Organization of American States] against Haiti -
- after U.S. business leaders complained, it undercut its own credibility in the
hemisphere both as a team player and as a democratic champion. The effect of the
policy zig-zags has almost certainly been to convince Haiti's anti-democratic forces
that Washington's opposition to the coup was disingenuous, according to observers
here. "When you have a giant that neglects to take effective action, that neglect is
interpreted as condoning" the coup, said an American with years of business
experience in Haiti. "If the U.S. sincerely wanted Aristide back, they should take
measures that are tailor-made to influence the people who made the coup. And they
haven't gone after those people. . . ."
Aristide, the leftist priest given to militantly anti-American rhetoric, had been
viewed with overt suspicion by the U.S. Embassy in Haiti for years before he entered
politics. In the wake of the Sept. 30 coup, Bush voiced his reluctance to mount an
invasion to restore the ousted leader. Then U.S. officials voiced their displeasure
about his human rights record and commitment to the democratic process. Finally,
the sweeping embargo imposed by Washington Nov. 5 was relaxed last week in
what administration officials presented as a "fine-tuning." A telling moment came just
10 days after Aristide was ousted when Maj. Michel Francois, the self-appointed
police chief and reputed leader of the coup, was asked in an interview how the coup
leaders could withstand U.S. pressure given Washington's support for Aristide. "You
really think so?" he asked with an amused smile, signaling skepticism about
Washington's stated backing for Aristide.
Ian Martin [director of the U.N./O.A.S. Mission in Haiti from April through December
1993], "Haiti: mangled multilateralism," Foreign Policy, Summer 1994, pp. 72-88. An
excerpt (pp. 72-73, 77, 80, 82-83, 85):
On Monday, October 11, 1993, the U.S.S. Harlan County was due to dock at
Port-au-Prince. The ship was to disembark U.S. and Canadian troops. . . . [A]s
diplomats and journalists went to the port, they were confronted with a hostile
demonstration of armed thugs. The next day, instead of waiting in the harbor while
the Haitian military was pressured to ensure a safe landing, the Harlan County turned
tail for Guantanamo Bay. Officials of the U.N. and the Organization of American
States (O.A.S.) were aghast. . . . The U.N. and O.A.S. had been neither consulted
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 45
nor informed of the decision by President Bill Clinton's National Security Council to
retreat. . . . The organizers of the Haitian protest could hardly believe their success.
"My people kept wanting to run away," Emmanuel Constant, leader of the right-wing
FRAPH [the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, a paramilitary
organization responsible for much of the terror], later told an American journalist. "But
I took the gamble and urged them to stay. Then the Americans pulled out! We were
astonished. That was the day FRAPH was actually born. . . ." U.S. officials, who
had been in direct discussion with the [Haitian] military, concluded that the army
needed further reassurance of its future. . . .
On July 3 Cedras [the coup leader] signed the Governors Island Agreement
[providing that he and other military leaders would have amnesty and "early
retirement" after Aristide returned to Haiti on October 30]. . . . The four-month period
before Aristide's return - a compromise from Cedras's initial proposal of six to eight
months - was presented to Aristide's negotiators as the minimum period for
deploying the police and military missions. But Aristide believed the military would
have ample time to frustrate his return. ... By [August 27] it had become all too clear
that the human rights situation since Governors Island had seriously deteriorated. . . .
[T]he violence was carried out with an impunity implying police complicity, and the
purpose seemed to be to terrorize those localities that had been the hotbeds of
support for Aristide. As the weeks went on, the political character of the violence
grew increasingly clear. . . . The military's declaration that public political activity
would not be permitted was reinforced in a calculated message to the nation when
businessman Antoine Izmery, who had defied the military in organizing peaceful but
highly publicized displays of support for Aristide, was dragged from a
commemorative mass on September 11 and executed in the presence of
international observers. The civilian mission's investigation found that the
assassination team, which included a person identified as a member of the armed
forces as well as several "attaches," arrived and departed the scene escorted by
police vehicles.
See also, Ronald G. Shafer, "Haiti's President stirs unease despite Clinton's
backing," Wall Street Journal, October 1 , 1993, p. A1 ("U.S. officials press Haitian
lawmakers to move on amnesty [of death squad leaders] and upgrading the Haitian
police force. U.S. officials say that the 600 troops being sent to Haiti starting next week
won't be used to provide security for Aristide"); Steven A. Holmes, "U.N. Force to Rely
on Haitians to Keep Order," New York Times, October 1 , 1 993, p. A5 (the U.S. Mission to
Haiti "will have no mandate to stop Haitian soldiers and paramilitary elements from
committing atrocities. 'It is not a peacekeeping role,' Secretary of Defense Aspin said. . .
. 'We are doing something other than peacekeeping here'"); Pamela Constable, "As
Aristide return nears, raids abound," Boston Globe, October 1 , 1993, p. 2 (the Clinton
administration announced that the U.N. Mission to Haiti, including its U.S. elements, "will
rely on the Haitian military and police to maintain order").
On the devastating effects of the coup on Haitian civil society, see for example,
Douglas Farah, "Grass Roots of Democracy in Haiti: All but Dead," International Herald
Tribune, May 10, 1994, p. 3. An excerpt:
The Haitian Army and its allies have damaged democratic institutions and grass-
roots organizations that had begun to grow in Haiti to such an extent that they will
take years to rebuild even if Haiti's military leaders surrender power, according to
diplomats and human-rights workers. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 46
Haitians and foreigners who work outside the capital said that not only the pro-
Aristide movement, but even nonpolitical local or community organizations had been
repressed. Thousands of community leaders have been driven into hiding,
effectively decapitating virtually all local organizations. "The forced displacement of
tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Haitians is part of the military's strategy to
destroy all forms of organization or opposition," [a joint report by the National Coalition
for Haitian Refugees and Human Rights Watch-Americas] said. . . . "Even if you
send Aristide back, it will be too late," [Reverend Antoine Adrien] said. "Those
returning will control nothing. All the militants are in hiding and the popular
organizations are dismantled. You don't rebuild those things overnight."
Douglas Farah, "Aristide's Followers Targeted in Haiti," Guardian Weekly (U.K.), April
24, 1 994, p. 1 7. An excerpt:
The army and its civilian allies in Haiti are engaged in massive terrorism aimed at
dismantling the last vestiges of organized support for exiled President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. . . . Human rights workers said ... the military's willingness to engage in
forms of terror . . . include[s] the systematic rape of women, usually wives or
relatives of men sought because they supported Aristide; the kidnapping of small
children of activists; the extensive use of clandestine prisons to hold and torture
captured Aristide supporters; and the mutilation of bodies before dumping them in
public places to be eaten by pigs.
Americas Watch and National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, Silencing a People: The
Destruction of Civil Society in Haiti, New York: Human Rights Watch, February 1 993
(detailing the repression of Haitian civil society, organization by organization; noting at p.
4 that "Indeed, far from a peripheral casualty of the coup, these organizations were as
much the target of the army's repression as was the elected Aristide government.
Violence unprecedented in Haiti was directed against popular organizations, the
independent media, the 77 Legliz or popular church, and anyone else who brought
together previously powerless people").
In the nine months following the 1 991 coup -- during which these rampant
massacres were taking place -- the New York Times devoted 54 percent of its coverage
of Haiti to human rights abuses attributable to Aristide's supporters, which were less than
1 percent of the total abuses. Other U.S. newspapers, though less extreme, reflected the
same extraordinary bias. See Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, "Human Rights in
Haiti," Extra!, January/February 1993, p. 22 (reporting a survey of the New York Times,
the Washington Post and the Miami Herald from September 30, 1 991 , to June 30, 1 992).
An excerpt:
In the three months following the coup, the three papers devoted only slightly fewer
paragraphs to discussing supposed human rights abuses under Aristide as to the
ongoing violence under the new military regime (43 percent vs. 57 percent). In other
words, less than a dozen deaths that might be attributed to Aristide's followers were
given almost as much weight as the 1 ,500 or more people killed in the coup or soon
after. More than 80 paragraphs in the entire nine-month period surveyed were
devoted to human rights abuses under the Aristide government ~ 29 percent of all
paragraphs dealing with human rights. This ratio was generally consistent in all three
papers.
See also, Doug McCabe and Greg Geboski, "Haiti Report," Z Magazine, March 1993,
pp. 9-1 1 (reporting data from the same survey).
For exceptional reporting on the links between the U.S. government and the Haitian
death squad and coup leaders, see Allan Nairn, "The eagle is landing: U.S. forces
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 47
occupy Haiti," Nation, October 3, 1994, p. 344; Allan Nairn, "Behind Haiti's
Paramilitaries: our man in FRAPH," Nation, October 24, 1994, p. 458; Allan Nairn, "He's
our S.O.B.: Emmanuel Constant, leader of the FRAPH in Haiti," Nation, October 31 ,
1994, p. 481 ; Allan Nairn, "Haiti Under the Gun: How U.S.-backed Paramilitaries Rule,"
Nation, January 15, 1996, p. 1 1 ; Allan Nairn, "Our payroll, Haitian hit: 1993 slaying of the
justice minister in Haiti," Nation, October 9, 1995, p. 369; Allan Nairn, "Haiti under cloak:
reported infiltration of the Haitian National Police by the Central Intelligence Agency,"
Nation, February 26, 1 996, p. 4.
The U.S. government's assistance to the perpetrators of the massacres continued
long after the coup leaders stepped down. See for example, Kenneth Roth [Executive
Director of Human Rights Watch], "U.S. Must Release Evidence on Haitian Abuses,"
Letter, New York Times, April 1 2, 1 997, section 1 , p. 1 8. An excerpt:
[The Clinton] Administration is obstructing efforts to extend the rule of law to
[Haiti's new police] force by refusing to give important evidence of past abuses to
Haitian prosecutors. Although Haiti's murderous army has been formally abolished,
many former soldiers have been incorporated into the 5,000-strong Haitian National
Police, including 130 former military officers and more than 1,000 lower-ranking
soldiers. The vetting of former soldiers to exclude those with records of serious
human rights abuse was often perfunctory, in part because of a lack of reliable
evidence. One of the best sources of evidence are 160,000 documents, including
photographs of torture victims, that the United States military seized from the Haitian
Army and its paramilitary allies in 1994. The Clinton Administration refuses to return
these documents without first removing the names of Americans.
The Administration's apparent motive is to avoid embarrassing revelations about
the involvement of American intelligence agents with the military regime that ruled
Haiti. The Haitian Government has refused to accept the documents on these terms.
To deprive Haitian prosecutors of this information is to sacrifice Haiti's efforts ... to
extend the rule of law to its police.
56. For the Piatt's Oilgram story, see Paul Sonali and Allyson LaBorde, "Texaco
Says It Didn't Break Haiti Ban, U.S. Government Studying Fines," Piatt's Oilgram,
September 20, 1994, p. 3. An excerpt:
Responding to an Associated Press report that federal investigators were trying
to find out why the Treasury Dept.'s Office of Foreign Assets Control (O.F.A.C.) had
not fined Texaco for violations of the embargo, Texaco said that "it had acted in a
totally legal and morally responsible manner in establishing a blind trust to run Texaco
Caribbean's operations in Haiti" after the U.S. imposed sanctions in October 1991 .
According to A.P., based on government documents, O.F.A.C. officials said in a
1993 report that Texaco should be fined $1 .6-million for 160 embargo violations.
However, O.F.A.C. didn't follow through because of contacts between top Texaco
officials and Bush Administration representatives.
For coverage of this story in the local U.S. press, see for example, A.P., "Ex
Treasury Chief May Have Sidestepped Haiti Embargo: Aide 'Protected' Brady After
Being Ordered to Drag Feet on Crackdown of Texaco, diary shows," Rocky Mountain
News (Denver, CO), October 2, 1 994, p. 83A (the Office of Foreign Assets director was
told to "go slow" on Texaco by Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady). For the Wall Street
Journals reference, see "Bentsen Orders Probe Into Treasury's Role In Texaco Haiti
Case," Wall Street Journal, September 21 , 1 994, p. A4 (mentioning the A. P. stories). In
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 48
an untitled two-paragraph "News Summaries" segment, U.S.A. Today also referred to
Bentsen's ordering an investigation (September 21 , 1994, p. 3A).
The Associated Press continued to investigate the story -- but the major U.S. media
did not publish its news-wire articles. See for example, John Solomon, A.P., "Agency
Head Failed to Stop Texaco Leak, Citing Bush Treasury Secretary," September 18,
1 994 (Westlaw database # 1 994 WL 1 01 36202); John Solomon, A.P., "Treasury
Secretary Asks for Probe in Haiti Embargo Case," September 20, 1994 (Westlaw
database # 1 994 WL 1 01 291 84); John Solomon, A.P., "Assets Control Director Ignored
Advice to Remove Self from Texaco Case," September 29, 1 994 (Westlaw database #
1 994 WL 1 01 40200); John Solomon, A.P., "Diary: OFAC Director was 'Protecting' Brady
in Texaco-Haiti Case," October 1 , 1 994 (Westlaw database # 1 994 WL 1 01 56738).
57. For the text of Bill Clinton's speech, see "In the Words of the President: The
Reasons Why the U.S. Must Invade Haiti," New York Times, September 16, 1994, p.
A10.
58. For a Canadian article on the length of Aristide's term, see Dave Todd,
Southam News, Telegraph Journal {New Brunswick), September 17, 1994. An excerpt:
[Clinton's plan amounts to] three years of stolen democracy. ... By deducting them
from, rather than adding them to, Aristide's suspended presidency, a key political
objective will be achieved . . . [namely] a partial legitimization of the 1991 coup d'etat
against Aristide.
59. The term "structural adjustment" refers to a series of economic "reforms" which
the International Monetary Fund and World Bank demand before giving loans to Third
World governments to pay off their existing international debts. These include:
privatizing state enterprises, devaluing local currencies, raising food prices, lowering
deficits by reducing consumer subsidies and charging for social services like health care
and education, dismantling regulation of the private sector, limiting protectionist
measures for foreign trade, and creating various incentives for foreign investment. See
also footnote 64 of chapter 1 of U.P. And see footnote 41 of chapter 6 of U.P.
60. On the World Bank's structural adjustment package for Haiti after the coup, see
Allan Nairn, "Aristide Banks on Austerity," Multinational Monitor, July/August 1994, pp.
7-9. The plan's paragraph 1 directs that: "the renovated state must focus on an
economic strategy centered on the energy and initiative of Civil Society, especially the
private sector, both national and foreign." Nairn reports that the plan commits Haiti:
to eliminate the jobs of half of its civil servants, "drastic[ally]" slash tariffs and import
restrictions, eschew price and foreign exchange controls, grant "emergency" aid to
the export sector, enforce an "open foreign investment policy," create special
corporate business courts "where the judges are more aware of the implications of
their decisions for economic efficiency," rewrite its corporate laws, "limit the scope of
state activity" and regulation, and diminish the power of President Aristide's executive
branch in favor of the more conservative Parliament.
61 . On the case of the Roosevelt administration, the Neutrality Act, and the
Spanish Civil War, see for example, Dante A. Puzzo, Spain and the Great Powers,
1936-1941, New York: Columbia University Press, 1962, pp. 150-155, 262 n. 27. This
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 49
study notes that although technically the Neutrality Act of 1 935 did not apply to Spain
until it was later amended, the Roosevelt administration made it clear in the summer of
1936 that the U.S. wanted no "interference" in the Spanish war, "a policy that served, in
effect, to equate the legitimate Spanish government with the insurgents [i.e. Franco's
Fascists]." Companies such as Martin Aircraft that wished to maintain trade with the
non-Fascist Republican government were told that supplying the Republic "would not
follow the spirit of the Government's policy," in the words of Acting Secretary of State
William Phillips. When an American arms exporter, Robert Cuse, insisted on his legal
right to ship airplanes and aircraft engines to the Republic in December 1 936, he was
denounced by Roosevelt as "unpatriotic. ... He represents the 1 percent of business
that does not live up to the best standards." Compare the Cuse case with that of
Thorkild Rieber, related in the text following this footnote in U.P. and footnote 64 of this
chapter.
62. On Thorkild Rieber's Nazism, see for example, Herbert Feis, The Spanish
Story: Franco and the Nations at War, New York: Knopf, 1 948, Appendix 1 , pp. 269-271 .
On Texaco's ships being redirected, see footnotes 63 and 64 of this chapter.
63. For contemporary left-wing press reporting of the Texaco story, see for
example, "Oil for Lisbon Goes to Franco," Industrial Worker, Vol. XIX, May 22, 1937, p. 1 .
See also, "Conspiracy Against Spain," Man! A Journal of the Anarchist ideal and
Movement (New York), Vol. V, No. 4, June 1 937, pp. 1 , 3 (discussing many embargo
violations that aided Franco); Allen Guttmann, The Wound in the Heart: America and the
Spanish Civil War, New York: Free Press, 1962, pp. 66-67, 137-138.
64. For diplomatic histories mentioning the Texaco story, see for example, Herbert
Feis, The Spanish Story: Franco and the Nations at War, New York: Knopf, 1 948, pp.
269-271 . This study reports that for falsely declaring that the oil shipments were going to
France and not to Spain, Texaco was fined $22,000 by the Treasury Department. See
also, Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War: 1931-39, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1965, p. 256 (discussing the story, but not mentioning the
fact that Texaco was violating its prior agreement with the Republic).
The episode also was mentioned four years after the fact in a glowing Life
magazine profile of Thorkild "Cap" Rieber -- "soberly regarded by his fellow workers as
the greatest oil man alive." See Joseph J. Thorndike Jr., "'Cap' Rieber: He Came Off a
Tanker to Build an Oil Empire and Prove that Industrial Daring is not Dead," Life, July 1 ,
1940, pp. 56-68. The reference (p. 62):
Rieber's dealings with the Franco Government in Spain were a shrewd gamble.
When the Spanish civil war broke out in July, 1 936, Texaco had five tankers on the
high seas bound for Spain. Rieber was in Paris. He flew to Spain, took a good look
around and forthwith ordered the tankers to deliver their oil to the Insurgents
[Franco's Fascists]. ... For the next two years Texaco supplied Franco with all the
oil he needed, while the Loyalists never had enough.
If Franco had lost, Texaco would have been out some $6,000,000. But the
gamble won and not only did victorious Franco pay his bill but the Spanish monopoly
is currently buying all its oil from Texaco. For ambitious young men Rieber is a prime
example of what it takes to be a successful tycoon.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 50
65. For studies of the post-World War II U.S. campaign to destroy anti-fascist
elements internationally and to return traditional ruling groups to power, see Gabriel
Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945,
New York: Pantheon, 1968 (updated edition 1990); Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko, The
Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954, New York:
Harper & Row, 1 972. These books were the first major scholarly efforts to document this
history, and remain extremely valuable and unique in their scope and depth despite the
flood of new scholarship since -- although, because they do not adhere to approved
orthodoxies, it is considered a violation of scholarly ethics in the American academic
community to refer to them. See also, David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're On Our
Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1999, especially ch. 4.
On operations in Greece, see footnote 72 of this chapter. On operations in Italy,
see footnotes 66, 67, 71 , 75, 76, 77 and 79 of this chapter. On operations in France, see
footnotes 71 and 79 of this chapter. On operations in Germany, see footnotes 69 and 71
of this chapter. On operations in Korea, see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnote 67.
On operations in Japan, see for example, Joe Moore, Japanese Workers and the
Struggle for Power, 1945-1947, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983,
especially ch. 7. An excerpt (pp. 1 88-1 89, 191):
S.C.A.P. [the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers, i.e. the post-war U.S.
administration in Japan,] had become convinced of the necessity of putting limitations
on the workers' freedom of action after coming face to face with the power and
radicalism of the working-class movement in spring 1946 and having to make the
decision that even the maintenance of an unpopular conservative government was
greatly preferable to allowing the left-wing opposition to come to power. . . . S.C.A.P.
henceforth put its emphasis upon the building of a healthy labor movement that would
avoid politics and radical actions such as production control, while encouraging
business and government leaders to resist such worker excesses. . . . The Yoshida
cabinet was only too happy to return to the anti-labor policies of the past, and
encourage union-busting tactics including use of the police to suppress disputes to a
degree that would have been unimaginable even a few months before. As if to
underscore S.C.A.P. 's approval, on several notable occasions even U.S. military
police participated. The new policy was called, in a cynical phrase current among
S.C.A.P. officials, "housebreaking" the labor movement. . . .
[The Civil Information and Education Sector of S.C.A.P.] suppressed whole
issues of left-wing publications, and the censors riddled many others with their blue
pencils. Henceforth, left-wing writers could no longer count upon freedom of the
press to ensure that unpopular opinions got into print. On 18 May, [U.S. General
Kermit] Dyke had already seen General MacArthur [the U.S commander] and
secured his consent to clamp down on the press unions. Two days after that, [the
chief of the CLE., Major Daniel] Imboden issued a strong warning to the press,
threatening to close down "irresponsible" papers as General Hodge had done in
Korea. He stated that "labor unions had no right and could not dictate the editorial
policy of a newspaper" for "that was the right of the owners and men who are
nominated by the owners."
Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in
Asia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, especially pp. 44-51 ; Howard B.
Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945-1952,
Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1989, especially ch. 4 and pp. 62-64; Gabriel
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 51
Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945,
New York: Pantheon, 1 968 (updated edition 1 990), ch. 21 . See also, Bruce Cumings,
The Origins of the Korean War, Vol. II ("The Roaring of the Cataract, 1 947-1 950"),
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. An excerpt (pp. 56-57):
Only Japan held [U.S. State Department planner George] Kennan's attentions in East
Asia, and his new notoriety and strategic placement in 1947 made it possible for him
to author the "reverse course," or what we may call the Kennan Restoration. . . . The
operative document for the reverse course, developed in draft form under Kennan's
aegis in September 1947 . . . envisioned a Japan that would be "friendly to the United
States," amenable to American leadership in foreign affairs, "industrially revived as a
producer primarily of consumer's goods and secondarily of capital goods," and active
in foreign trade; militarily it would be "reliant upon the U.S. for its security from
external attack." The paper reserved to the United States "a moral right to intervene"
in Japan should "stooge groups" like the Japanese Communist Party threaten
stability. Leaving little to the imagination, it went on: "Recognizing that the former
industrial and commercial leaders of Japan are the ablest leaders in the country, that
they are the most stable element, that they have the strongest natural ties with the
U.S., it should be U.S. policy to remove obstacles to their finding their natural level in
Japanese leadership." Thus Kennan called for an end to the purge of war criminals
and business groups who supported them.
On operations in Thailand, see for example, Frank C. Darling [former C.I.A. analyst
and Thailand specialist], Thailand and the United States, Washington: Public Affairs
Press, 1 965, chs. II and III, especially pp. 65, 69 (the dictator of Thailand under the
Japanese, Phibun Songkhram, who had in fact declared war against the United States,
was reinstalled in an American-supported military coup in 1948 and thereby became
"the first pro-Axis dictator to regain power after the war").
On operations in Indochina, see for example, Archimedes L.A. Patti, Why Viet
Nam?: Prelude to America's Albatross, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
On operations in French North Africa, the first area liberated by U.S. forces in World
War II, see for example, Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign
Policy Since 1938, Baltimore: Penguin, 1971 , ch. 2, especially pp. 54-66. An excerpt
(pp. 55-59):
The United States took the view that one could do business with Vichy [the pro-
Nazi government in southern France during World War II]. Much in Petain's [the
Vichy chief of state] program appeared to Roosevelt and Hull [the British Prime
Minister] to represent the best hope for France, especially those parts that stood for
work, patriotism, and stability. . . . The President did everything in his power to stop
de Gaulle's rise, primarily because of his fear that the French people upon liberation
would, as they had in the past, run to an extreme. . . . What made [de Gaulle] even
more dangerous was the way that he flirted with the forces of the left, especially the
communists in the Resistance. "France faces a revolution when the Germans have
been driven out," the President once said, and he feared that the man most likely to
profit from it would be de Gaulle.
Roosevelt spent much time searching for an alternative to de Gaulle. He might
have wanted to turn to Vichy, but Petain was too thoroughly brushed with the tar of
the collaborationist. Roosevelt's best hope was the French Army, which represented
the forces of stability and conservatism without appearing to be pro-Nazi. ... By
accident, Admiral Jean Darlan was in Algiers when the [Allied] invasion hit. Darlan
was bitterly anti-British, author of Vichy's anti-semitic laws, and a willing
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 52
collaborationist, but he was also the Commander-in-Chief of Vichy's armed forces
and he was ready to double-cross Petain. He agreed to a deal proposed by Clark
and Murphy, which required him to order the French to lay down their arms, in return
for which the Allies made him the Governor General of all French North Africa.
Within a few days the French officers obeyed Darlan's order to cease fire, and a
week after the invasion Eisenhower flew to Algiers and approved the deal. . . . The
result was that in its first major foreign-policy venture in World War II, the United
States gave its support to a man who stood for everything Roosevelt and Churchill
had spoken out against in the Atlantic Charter. As much as Goering or Goebbels,
Darlan was the antithesis of the principles the Allies said they were struggling to
establish.
66. On U.S. fears about the 1948 Italian election and the U.S. operation to sway it,
see for example, James E. Miller, "Taking Off the Gloves: The United States and the
Italian Elections of 1 948," Diplomatic History, Vol. 7, No. 1 , Winter 1 983, pp. 35-55 (on
U.S. use of covert funding and military supplies, sponsorship of massive propaganda
efforts, and employment of the threat of cutting off aid, in order to sway the 1 948 Italian
election); Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its
Effects on the Cold War, New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1 988, pp. 89-95 (on the
C.I.A.'s use of former Nazi collaborators for postwar operations to help avert an Italian
Communist electoral victory); John Lamberton Harper, America and the Reconstruction
of Italy, 1945-1948, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986, especially ch.
9; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II,
Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1 995, ch. 2. See also footnotes 67, 71 , 75, 76, 77 and
79 of this chapter.
67. On U.S. efforts to keep the working-class parties out of power in Italy through
the 1960s and the contemplation of a coup, see for example, Edward S. Herman and
Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection, New York: Sheridan
Square, 1 986, ch. 4 (on the coup plan in the 1 960s by the C.I.A. -dominated organization
S.I.F.A.R., see pp. 78-81 ). An excerpt (pp. 73-74):
Enormous resources were poured into Italy to manipulate the postwar elections.
A Marshall Plan subsidy of some $227 million was voted by Congress just prior to the
Italian elections of April 18, 1948. ... In the mid-1970s the Pike Committee of the
U.S. House of Representatives estimated that $65 million had been invested in Italian
elections in the period 1948-68. Ten million dollars was pumped into the election of
1972. Former C.I.A. officer Victor Marchetti estimated C.I.A. outlays were $20-30
million a year in the 1950s, dropping to a mere $10 million a year in the 1960s. These
funds were also used to subsidize newspapers, anticommunist labor unions, Catholic
groups, and favored political parties (mainly the Christian Democrats). . . .
Following the victory of the Right in the elections of April 1948, a new, secret
antisubversive police force was established under the Ministry of Interior, with U.S.
advisers. This was filled largely from the old fascist secret police of Mussolini. At the
same time, the fascist party Italian Social Movement (M.S.I.) began a massive
expansion program, with the assistance of U.S. intelligence officials. M.S.I, had
significant backing from business interests in both Italy and the United States, and
probably received financial support from the U.S. government. The honorary
chairman of M.S.I, was Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, the long-time fascist leader,
who had been protected by the United States at the end of the war. General Vito
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 53
Miceli, another M.S.I, leader, received an $800,000 U.S. subsidy through U.S.
Ambassador Graham Martin in 1972. M.S.I, official Luigi Turchi was a guest of honor
at the Nixon White House in 1 972.
"The C.I.A. in Italy: An Interview with Victor Marchetti," in Philip Agee and Louis Wolf,
eds., Dirty Work: the C.I.A. in Western Europe, Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1978, pp. 168-
1 73; John Ranelagh, The Agency: the Rise and Decline of the C.I.A., New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1 986, especially pp. 1 1 5f; William Colby with Peter Forbath, Honorable
Men: My Life in the C.I.A., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978, ch. 4; Sallie Pisani,
The C.I.A. and the Marshall Plan, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1 991 , pp. 1 06-
107.
On this topic, Herman and Brodhead also cite: Giuseppe De Lutiis, Storia dei
servizi segreti in Italia, Rome: Editori Reuniti, 1985; Gianni Flamini, II partido del golpe:
Le strategie della tensione e del terrore dal primo centrosinistra organico al sequestro
Moro, Vol. I, Ferrara: Italo Bovolenta, 1981 ; Roberto Faenza and Marco Fini, Gli
Americani in Italia, Milan: Feltrinello, 1 976. See also footnotes 66, 68, 71 , 75, 76 and 77
of this chapter.
68. On U.S. intervention in Italy in the 1 970s, see for example, William Blum,
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME:
Common Courage, 1995, ch. 18. An excerpt (p. 120):
It is not known when, if ever, the C.I.A. ended its practice of funding anti-
Communist groups in Italy. Internal Agency documents of 1972 reveal contributions
of some $10 million to political parties, affiliated organizations, and 21 individual
candidates in the parliamentary elections of that year. At least $6 million was passed
to political leaders for the June 1976 elections. And in the 1980s, C.I.A. Director
William Casey arranged for Saudi Arabia to pay $2 million to prevent the Communists
from achieving electoral gains in Italy. Moreover, the largest oil company in the
United States, Exxon Corp., admitted that between 1963 and 1972 it had made
political contributions to the Christian Democrats and several other Italian political
parties totaling $46 million to $49 million. Mobil Oil Corp. also contributed to the Italian
electoral process to the tune of an average $500,000 a year from 1970 to 1973.
There is no report that these corporate payments derived from persuasion by the
C.I.A. or the State Department, but it seems rather unlikely that the firms would
engage so extravagantly in this unusual sideline with complete spontaneity. . . .
[An] Italian newspaper, the Daily American of Rome, for decades the country's
leading English-language paper, was for a long period in the 1950s to the '70s partly
owned and/or managed by the C.I.A. "We 'had' at least one newspaper in every
foreign capital at any given time," the C.I.A. admitted in 1977, referring to papers
owned outright or heavily subsidized, or infiltrated sufficiently to have stories printed
which were useful to the Agency or suppress those it found detrimental.
A.P., "Italian Asks Probe Of Story On C.I.A.," Boston Globe, July 23, 1 990, p. 1 0. An
excerpt:
President Francesco Cossiga [of Italy] has called for an investigation into a report
that the C.I.A. encouraged terrorism in Italy in the 1970s, his office said yesterday.
The report on state-owned R.A.I, television alleged that the C.I.A. paid Licio Gelli,
grandmaster of the secret Propaganda Due Masonic lodge, to foment terrorist
activities. The P-2 has been accused of seeking to install a right-wing dictatorship in
Italy during the 1970s with the help of secret service officials. . . . The R.A.I, report
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 54
was based mainly on interviews with two men who claimed to have worked for the
CIA
Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian
Connection, New York: Sheridan Square, 1 986, pp. 81 -87 (discussing a 1 984 report of
the Italian Parliament on the clandestine right-wing organization P-2 and other neo-
fascist groups in Italy who, working closely with elements of the Italian military and
secret services, were preparing a virtual coup in the 1 970s to impose an ultra-right
regime and to block the rising forces of the left).
For some insight into U.S. planners' reasons for intervening in Italian politics, see
for example, Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet
Relations from Nixon to Reagan, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1985. An excerpt
(pp. 487-488, 490):
The "major problem" in the Western alliance, [U.S. Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger] continued, one that was overtaking U.S. -Western European differences,
was "the domestic evolution in many European countries . . ." [in the mid-1970s
towards] the development of Euro-communism. ... In April [1976] Kissinger publicly
warned against the possibility of the P.C.I. [Italian Communist Party] participating in a
coalition government in Italy. . . . [He stated:] "The extent to which such a party
follows the Moscow line is unimportant. Even if Portugal had followed the Italian
model, we would still have been opposed. . . . [T]he impact of an Italian Communist
Party that seemed to be governing effectively would be devastating - on France, and
on N.A.T.G, too. . . ."
Eurocommunism was the term coined in 1975-76 to denote the new current of
Western European communism that stressed independence of action for each party
and embodied varying degrees of democratic and pluralistic tendencies. . . . [T]he
United States perceived Eurocommunism as threatening its interests in Western
Europe . . . [and] the Soviet Union also came to see Eurocommunism as threatening
its interests in Eastern Europe.
69. For Kennan's statement about the West "walling off" Western Germany, see
"The Charge in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State," March 6, 1946,
Foreign Relations of the United States 1946, Vol. V ("The British Commonwealth:
Western and Central Europe"), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969, pp.
51 6-520. Kennan's exact words (p. 51 9):
It seems to me unlikely that such a country [postwar Germany] once unified
under a single administration and left politically to itself and to the Russians would
ever adjust itself to its western environment successfully enough to play a positive
and useful role in world society as we conceive it. If this is true then we have and
have had ever since our acceptance of Oder-Neisse Line [the new German/Polish
border] only two alternatives: (1) to leave remainder of Germany nominally united but
extensively vulnerable to Soviet political penetration and influence or (2) to carry to its
logical conclusion the process of partition which was begun in the east and to
endeavor to rescue western zones of Germany by walling them off against eastern
penetration and integrating them into international pattern of western Europe rather
than into a unified Germany. I am sure Russians themselves are confident that if
rump Germany west of Oder-Neisse were to be united under single administration
there would be no other single political force therein which could stand up against Left
Wing bloc with Russian backing.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 55
See also, John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of
Postwar American National Security Policy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1 982, p.
76 (in another document, Kennan stated: the "trend of our thinking means . . . that we do
not really want to see Germany reunified at this time, and that there are no conditions on
which we would really find such a solution satisfactory"); Carolyn Eisenberg, "Working-
Class Politics and the Cold War: American Intervention in the German Labor Movement,
1945-49," Diplomatic History, Vol. 7, No. 4, Fall 1983, especially pp. 297-305
(concluding that the decision to divide Germany was fueled by the fear of "a unified,
centralized, politicized labor movement committed to a far-reaching program of social
change"); Geoffrey Warner, "Eisenhower, Dulles and Western Europe, 1955-1957,"
International Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 2, April 1993, pp. 319-329 (review of declassified
documents on the subject); Melvyn Leffler, "The United States and the Strategic
Dimensions of the Marshall Plan," Diplomatic History, Summer 1 988, pp. 277-306. For a
contemporary discussion of Stalin's "forgotten" 1952 proposal for reunification and
neutralization of Germany, see James P. Warburg, Germany: Key to Peace, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1953, pp. 188-194.
70. On the scale of the French resistance during the Nazi occupation, see for
example, Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, New York: Knopf,
1972, pp. 294-295 (estimating that resistance participation in France at its peak, "at least
as officially recognized after the war," involved about 2 percent of the French adult
population while perhaps 1 percent were willing to read a resistance newspaper).
71 . On the American and British operation to dismantle the anti-fascist resistance
in Northern Italy and to restore the traditional industrial order, see for example, Federico
Romero, The United States and the European Trade Union Movement, 1944-1951,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989 (translation 1992), especially chs.
2 and 5. Note that this is an approving account of the British and American actions. An
excerpt (pp. 52-59):
A few days after the liberation [of the industrial north of Italy, British Labour Party
attache W.H.] Braine left for a rapid turn through the northern cities. In Bologna,
Milan, Turin, and Genoa he ran into an unexpected situation. The industrial plants
were in good condition and working order. Activist optimism was to be seen
everywhere. There were many serious problems, but the social fabric did not seem
as torn apart as it was in the south. The first decrees of the Committee of National
Liberation in Northern Italy (C.L.N. A. I.) and its rudimentary but effective
administrative framework unequivocally demonstrated the existence of a new
government. It was thin but widespread, and the Allies had to reckon with it. . . .
Braine requested immediate decisions on three important issues. He asked for
suspension of the C.L.N.A.I. decrees blocking all dismissals [of workers], paying a
"liberation bonus" to the workers, and establishing worker-management councils
(C.D.G.) in industrial plants. The Allies and the Italian government must prevent the
"arbitrary replacement" of business leaders with commissioners appointed by the
workers or by the C.L.N. The Italian government must promptly prepare regulations,
under the guidance of the A.C.C. [Allied Control Commission], to govern bargaining
over wages and layoffs. . . .
The resistance, useful though it was from a military point of view, had always
inspired mistrust among the Allies, since it was a free political and social movement
that was hard to control. It was coming out at this moment as a source of
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 56
independent power and as such had to be changed. . . . The Allies took drastic steps
to prevent the worker and partisan mobilization in the enthusiasm following the
liberation from leading to durable power structures, from imposing radical changes in
property ownership and hierarchy in industry, and from setting up an uncontrolled
anti-Fascist purge inspired by class-based criteria. . . . The A.M.G.'s attention was
drawn in particular to the worker-management councils, whose legitimacy was
contested, in accord with the views of the industrialists and the moderate political
forces, and which, it was feared, could evolve into instruments for socializing
industry. The intention was to restore all power and responsibility for the operation of
industrial plants to the hands of management, leaving a purely consultative role for
the worker-management councils. . . . A.M.G. power had been able to keep the
working-class drive for political power in check, to rein in the most radical impulses of
victorious antifascism, and to place the structure of industrial power under control,
thus saving the prerogatives of the entrepreneurs. Sufficient bounds had been
placed on labor mobilization to channel it into less damaging courses, laying a basis
for institutionalizing and regulating the bargaining process.
Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy,
1943-1945, New York: Pantheon, 1968 (updated edition 1990), ch. 3, especially pp. 61-
63, 436-439 (on the successes of the Italian resistance during the war and its destruction
by the Allied powers); Basil Davidson, Scenes From The Anti-Nazi War, New York:
Monthly Review, 1980, especially pp. 251-278 (memoir of a later-eminent historian of
Africa who participated in the anti-Nazi underground in Italy and Yugoslavia during
World War II; recounting the heroism and radical-democratic aspirations of the Italian
resistance and the American and British policy to suppress the popular forces as the
Nazis were defeated). See also, Gianfranco Pasquino, "The Demise of the First Fascist
Regime and Italy's Transition to Democracy: 1943-1948," in Guillermo O'Donnell,
Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:
Prospects for Democracy, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 45-70
(brief overview of Italian politics after the war). And see footnotes 66, 67, 75, 76, 77 and
79 of this chapter.
On the U.S. operations in post-World War II France, see for example, Gabriel Kolko,
The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945, New York:
Pantheon, 1968 (updated edition 1990), ch. 4 and pp. 439-445; Alfred W. McCoy, The
Politics Of Heroin: C.I.A. Complicity In The Global Drug Trade, Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill,
1991, chs. 1 and 2.
On the enthusiastic involvement of the mainstream U.S. labor leadership in the
operations to restore the old industrial order to power in Northern Italy ~ in part by
reorienting the new Italian unions from their radical-democratic structure to American-
style, leadership-dominated "business unionism" -- see for example, Federico Romero,
The United States and the European Trade Union Movement, 1944-1951, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1989 (translation 1992), especially pp. 16-41, 149.
On the U.S. labor leadership's complicity in the overall U.S. and British post-war
effort to destroy unions internationally, see also, for example, Roy Godson, American
Labor and European Politics: The A.F.L. as a Transnational Force, New York: Crane,
Russak, 1976, especially pp. 52-53, 75, 104, 1 17-137. This book, based on internal
A.F.L. documents, explains in glowing terms and frames as a great humanitarian
achievement in defense of democracy, liberty, and a free trade union movement, how the
A.F.L. exploited postwar starvation in Europe to transfer power to its own associates by
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 57
keeping food from their opponents (pp. 3, 104, 116); employed gangsters as strike
breakers to split the labor movement (pp. 1 20-1 25); undermined efforts of French labor to
block shipments to the French forces attempting to reconquer Indochina (p. 1 35); split
the Confederation Generale du Travail, a major French union in the key industries of
coal mining, communications, and transportation, in 1 947 as part of its efforts to "restore
the internal balance of political power and prevent a shift to the extreme left" (pp. 1 1 7-
1 32); and so on. However, the book skirts the Mafia connection, which is detailed in
footnote 79 of this chapter.
Other studies of this topic include: Ronald Radosh, American Labor and United
States Foreign Policy, New York: Random House, 1969 (review of U.S. labor leaders'
rigid Cold War positions on foreign policy matters, and their active participation in reining
in left-wing labor movements internationally); Ronald Filippelli, American Labor and
Postwar Italy, 1943-1953: A Study of Cold War Politics, Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1989; Sallie Pisani, The C.I.A. and the Marshall Plan, Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 1991, pp. 99-100 (on U.S. labor leaders' activities in postwar France);
Howard B. Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan,
1945-1952, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1989, ch. 4 (on U.S. labor leaders'
activities in occupied Japan); Fred Hirsh and Richard Fletcher, The C.I.A. and The
Labour Movement, Nottingham, U.K.: Spokesman, 1977. See also, Thomas Braden,
"I'm glad the C.I.A. is 'immoral,'" Saturday Evening Post, May 20, 1 967, p. 1 ("It was my
idea to give the $1 5,000 to Irving Brown [of the A.F.L.]. He needed it to pay off his
strong-arm squads in the Mediterranean port, so that American supplies could be
unloaded against the opposition of the Communist dock workers").
Similar attitudes have persisted in the U.S. union leadership until the present. See
for example, Aaron Bernstein, "Is Big Labor Playing Global Vigilante?: The A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Spends Millions A Year To Fight Communism Overseas -- Fueling A Bitter Internal
Battle," Business Week, November 4, 1985, pp. 92-96. An excerpt:
Through a group of little-known institutes, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. spends $43 million a
year in 83 countries - often for anticommunist projects that tend to merge with the
[Reagan] Administration's foreign policy themes. . . . Their combined spending nearly
matches the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s $45 million U.S. budget. Some $5 million of the foreign
affairs money comes from dues of member unions. The other $38 million comes
largely from two government sources. One is the Agency for International
Development (A.I.D.) . . . The other is the National Endowment for Democracy
(N.E.D.), a congressionally funded foundation started with the aid of conservative
Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) to "sell the principles of democracy" abroad. . . .
[Cjonservative foreign policies are nothing new for labor: The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has
long been proud of the role International Affairs Dept. Director Irving J. Brown and his
predecessor Jay Lovestone have played in fighting communism around the world
since World War II.
72. On the destruction of the anti-Nazi resistance and restoration of Nazi
collaborators in Greece by Britain and the U.S., see for example, Lawrence S. Wittner,
American Intervention in Greece, 1943-1949, New York: Columbia University Press,
1 982. This study describes the rise of the anti-fascist resistance during and after the
Nazi occupation (pp. 2-3), and the British -- followed by the U.S. -- campaign of violent
suppression of the Greek popular movement and reinstitution of the traditional order,
once the Nazis were forced from Greece. An excerpt (pp. 31 , 33-35, 80, 88, 1 54, 1 49):
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 58
Britain's defeat of E.A.M. [National Liberation Front, the main anti-fascist
resistance organization] in December 1944 shattered the hegemony of the left,
emboldened the right, and opened the way for a royalist takeover of the organs of
state power: the police, the army, and the administration. . . . Throughout the
countryside, right-wing mobs brutalized or killed leftists, republicans, and their
families. National guardsmen attacked left-wing editors and smashed their
printshops. ... As usual, the Russians accepted such developments with a cynical
equanimity. "This war is not as in the past," Stalin . . . [said] in the spring of 1945.
"Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. . . ." By the
end of World War II, then, American policymakers were ready for the
counterrevolutionary initiatives of subsequent years. . . .
Behind American policy, as behind that of Britain and Russia, lay the goal of
containing the Greek left. . . . "It is necessary only to glance at a map," Truman
declared [in his March 12, 1947, speech announcing the Truman Doctrine], to see
that if Greece should fall to the rebels, "confusion and disorder might well spread
throughout the entire Middle East. . . ." Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr . . . protested
that "this fascist government through which we have to work is incidental. . . ."
[K]ey American officials, particularly in the U.S. embassy, agreed with the Greek
authorities on the necessity of harsh measures. . . . American officials initially
provided undeviating support for political executions. . . . Although "some of those
persons imprisoned and sentenced to death after the December 1 944 rebellion may
not have been at that time hardened Communists, it is unlikely that they have been
able to resist the influence of Communist indoctrination organizations existing within
most prisons," [said the U.S. charge d'affaires in Athens, Karl Rankin]. ... In May
[1947], the British ambassador reported that members of the U.S. embassy had been
discussing "the necessity" of outlawing the K.K.E. [the Greek Communist Party]. . . .
That December, with the rebellion in full sway, the Athens government passed a law
formally dissolving the K.K.E. , E.A.M. , and all groups associated with them; seizing
their assets; and making the expression of revolutionary ideas a crime subject to
imprisonment. From the standpoint of American officials, this was a struggle to the
death.
The study concludes that during the Greek civil war, "an estimated 1 58,000 of
Greece's 7.5 million people [were] killed"; 800,000 were made refugees; and untold
others were wounded or imprisoned (p. 283).
U.S. leaders' disregard for Greek self-determination and democracy continued long
after the war, evidenced for example by the following incident (p. 303):
In 1964, when [Greek Prime Minister] George Papandreou met with Lyndon Johnson
in Washington, the atmosphere could hardly have been chillier. To make possible the
establishment of N.A.T.O. bases on Cyprus, now independent and nonaligned, the
President demanded the adoption of the "Acheson plan," which entailed the partition
of Cyprus between Greece and Turkey. Moreover, he threatened to withdraw
N.A.T.O. aid if Greece did not accept the plan. When Papandreou responded that,
"in that case, Greece might have to rethink the advisability of belonging to N.A.T.O.,"
Johnson retorted that "maybe Greece should rethink the value of a parliament which
could not take the right decision." Later, the Greek ambassador remonstrated that
"no Greek parliament could accept such a plan," only to have the American President
explode: "Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant,
Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fellows continue itching the elephant,
they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good. ... If your Prime
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 59
Minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament and constitution, he, his
parliament and his constitution may not last very long."
See also, Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign
Policy, 1943-1945, New York: Pantheon, 1968 (updated edition 1990), ch. 8 and pp.
428-436; Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United
States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954, New York: Harper & Row, 1 972, chs. 8 and 1 5;
William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II,
Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1 995, ch. 3. And see footnote 65 of this chapter.
73. On the destruction of the anti-fascist resistance in Korea, see chapter 8 of U.P.
and its footnote 67.
74. On U.S. support for far-right elements and economic subversion in post-war
Italy, see footnotes 66, 67, 68 and 79 of this chapter.
75. For N.S.C. 1 and further discussion, see National Security Council
Memorandum 1/3, "Position of the United States With Respect to Italy in the Light of the
Possibility of Communist Participation in the Government by Legal Means," and State-
Army-Navy-Air Force Coordinating Committee [S.A.N.A.C.C.] Memorandum 390/1 ,
"Provision of U.S. Equipment to the Italian Armed Forces," March 8 and January 16,
1948, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Vol. Ill ("Western Europe"),
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974, pp. 775-779, 757-762. N.S.C. 1 ,
not all of which is declassified, provided (p. 779):
In the event the Communists obtain domination of the Italian government by legal
means, the United States should:
(a.) Immediately take steps to accomplish a limited mobilization, including any
necessary compulsory measures, and announce this action as a clear indication of
United States determination to oppose Communist aggression and to protect our
national security.
(b.) Further strengthen its military position in the Mediterranean.
(c.) Initiate combined military staff position in the Mediterranean.
(d.) Provide the anti-Communist Italian underground with financial and military
assistance.
(e.) Oppose Italian membership in the United Nations.
76. On Kennan's view that the U.S. should intervene militarily in Italy to prevent its
election, see for example, George Kennan, "The Director of the Policy Planning Staff
(Kennan) to the Secretary of State," March 1 5, 1 948, Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1948, Vol. Ill ("Western Europe"), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1974. An excerpt (p. 849):
I question whether it would not be preferable for Italian Government to outlaw
Communist Party and take strong action against it before elections. Communists
would presumably reply with civil war, which would give us grounds for reoccupation
[of] Foggia fields or any other facilities we might wish. That would admittedly result in
much violence and probably a military division of Italy; but we are getting close to the
deadline and I think it might well be preferable to a bloodless election victory,
unopposed by ourselves, which would give the Communists the entire peninsula at
one coup and send waves of panic to all surrounding areas.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 60
See also, James E. Miller, "Taking Off the Gloves: The United States and the Italian
Elections of 1 948," Diplomatic History, Vol. 7, No. 1 , Winter 1 983, pp. 35-55 at p. 51 .
77. For the Pike Committee Report, see C.I.A.: The Pike Report, Nottingham, U.K.:
Spokesman Books, 1977, especially pp. 193-195, 203-21 1 ; or Special Supplements,
Village Voice, February 1 6 and 23, 1 976 (reprinting leaked copies of the first two Parts of
the Pike Committee Report, which had been suppressed by the U.S. House of
Representatives on January 29, 1976). The Report notes that C.I.A. interference in
Italian politics included a subsidy of more than $65 million given to approved political
parties and affiliations, from 1948 through the early 1970s. See also footnotes 67 and 68
of this chapter.
78. For some of the scholarship on post-war U.S. subversion in Italy, see footnotes
66, 67 and 71 of this chapter.
Edward Herman's and Frank Brodhead's book ~ mentioned in the text ~ exposes
the fraudulent "Bulgarian Connection" theory, supported by the Western media and
instigated by the C.I.A., which held that the right-wing Turkish terrorist Mehmet AN Agca,
who attempted to assassinate the Pope in Italy in 1 981 , was a Bulgarian and K.G.B.
agent. See Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian
Connection, New York: Sheridan Square, 1 986.
79. On the post-war reconstruction of the Mafia by the U.S. as part of its campaign
to destroy the European labor movement, see for example, Alfred W. McCoy, The
Politics Of Heroin: C.I.A. Complicity In The Global Drug Trade, Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill,
1 991 , chs. 1 and 2 (updated edition of the classic work on U.S. government involvement
in drug-running, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, New York: Harper and Row,
1972). An excerpt (pp. 25, 36-38):
In Sicily the O.S.S. [the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the C.I.A.],
through the Office of Naval Intelligence, initially allied with the Mafia to assist the
Allied forces in their 1943 invasion. Later, the alliance was maintained to check the
growing strength of the Italian Communist party on the island. ... As Allied forces
crawled north through the Italian mainland, American intelligence officers became
increasingly upset about the leftward drift of Italian politics. Between late 1943 and
mid-1944, the Italian Communist party's membership had doubled, and in the
German-occupied northern half of the country an extremely radical resistance
movement was gathering strength. . . . Rather than being heartened by the
underground's growing strength, the U.S. army became increasingly concerned
about its radical politics and began to cut back its arms drops to the resistance in
mid- 1944
As Italy veered to the left in 1943-1944, the American military became alarmed
about its future position in Italy, and O.S.S. felt that [Sicily's] naval bases and
strategic location in the Mediterranean might provide a future counterbalance to a
Communist mainland. . . . Don Calogero [an Italian mobster] rendered . . . services to
the anti-Communist effort by breaking up leftist political rallies. On September 16,
1944, for example, the Communist leader Girolama Li Causi held a rally in Villalba
that ended abruptly in a hail of gunfire as Don Calogero's men fired into the crowd
and wounded nineteen spectators. . . . The Allied occupation and the subsequent
slow restoration of democracy reinstated the Mafia with its full powers, put it once
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 61
more on the way to becoming a political force, and returned to the Onorata Societa
the weapons which Fascism had snatched from it. . . ."
In 1946 American military intelligence made one final gift to the Mafia -- they
released [American mobster] Lucky Luciano from prison and deported him to Italy,
thereby freeing one of the criminal talents of his generation to rebuild the heroin trade.
. . . Within two years after Luciano's return to Italy, the U.S. government deported
more than one hundred more mafiosi as well. And with the cooperation of his old
friend Don Calogero and the help of many of his former followers from New York,
Luciano was able to build an awesome international narcotics syndicate soon after
his arrival in Italy.
The study also describes how the U.S. government helped to reestablish the
Corsican Mafia in France when the C.I.A. employed the Corsican syndicates to forcibly
break Marseille's powerful Communist labor unions during dock strikes in 1 947 and
1 950. These actions "put the Corsicans in a powerful enough position to establish
Marseille as the postwar heroin capital of the Western world" between 1 948 and 1 972
(pp. 44-61).
See also, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The C.I.A., Drugs
and the Press, London: Verso, 1 998, ch. 5; Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup:
Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism, Boston: South End, 1980 (on the probable
involvement of the C.I.A., Mafiosi, certain Southeast Asians and elements of the Nixon
White House in the sudden shift of the U.S. heroin supply route from Marseilles to
Southeast Asia and Mexico in the early 1 970s). On the involvement of the U.S. labor
leadership in these actions, see footnote 71 of this chapter.
Chomsky explains the reason for the C.I.A.'s ongoing involvement with the drug
racket since World War II {Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1 991 , p.
119):
There are good reasons why the C.I.A. and drugs are so closely linked. Clandestine
terror requires hidden funds, and the criminal elements to whom the intelligence
agencies naturally turn expect a quid pro quo. Drugs are the obvious answer. . . .
One prime target for an authentic "Drug War" would therefore be close at hand.
For other studies of U.S. government complicity in the global drug-trade (the major
source is McCoy's book, cited above), see for example, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey
St. Clair, Whiteout: The C.I.A., Drugs and the Press, London: Verso, 1 998 (tracing the
entire history from France and Sicily, to Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and Latin America,
with extensive references to more detailed sources); Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control:
The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms
Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection, New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1 987 (on the
complicity of the Reagan-Bush administrations in the drug rackets in Central America in
the 1 980s as part of their support for contra operations in Nicaragua); Peter Dale Scott
and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the C.I.A. in Central
America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991 (updated edition 1998); Gary
Webb, Dark Alliance: The C.I.A., the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, New
York: Seven Stories, 1998; Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of
Dope, Dirty Money, and the C.I.A., New York: Norton, 1987, especially chs. 3 and 26.
See also, Ahmed Rashid, "Gang Warfare: mujahideen forces on verge of collapse," Far
Eastern Economic Review, September 14, 1989, pp. 23-24 (on the heroin trade by the
U.S.-funded mujahedin in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, with 750 tons of
opium produced in Afghanistan in 1 989). And see footnote 50 of this chapter (on U.S.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 62
support for the heroin trade in Afghanistan); the text of chapter 1 of U.P.; and the text of
chapter 10 of a P.
After years of denial, the C.I.A. conceded in October 1 998 that it had concealed
from Congress and other government agencies its knowledge that contra groups in
Nicaragua in the 1980s had from the beginning decided to smuggle drugs into the U.S.
to support their operations. The New York Times -- which for years had angrily attacked
those who charged C.I.A. complicity in contra drug-smuggling -- reported this important
revelation on the Saturday of a three-day holiday, on an inside page. See James Risen,
"C.I.A. Said to Ignore Charges of Contra Drug Dealing in '80s," New York Times,
October 1 0, 1 998, p. A7. Furthermore, Risen's article omitted reference to the crucial fact
that, as C.I.A. Inspector General Fred Hitz acknowledged to Congress, the C.I.A. knew of
the contra-drug links and received a waiver from Reagan's Attorney General in 1 982 that
allowed it to keep this knowledge secret -- an omission which sustained the pretense
that the C.I.A. was simply acting as a "rogue" agency, rather than the obedient executor
of the will of the White House. This fact was reported elsewhere, but not in the New
York Times. See for example, Walter Pincus, "Inspector: C.I.A. Kept Ties With Alleged
Traffickers," Washington Post, March 1 7, 1 998, p. A1 2 ("The inspector general also said
that under an agreement in 1982 between then-Attorney General William French Smith
and the C.I.A., agency officers were not required to report allegations of drug trafficking
involving non-employees, which was defined as meaning paid and non-paid assets [i.e.
agents], pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, as well as contra officials and others").
Moreover, the edition of the New York Times that was sold in New York City omitted six
important paragraphs of Risen's article which appeared in editions of the paper that were
sold elsewhere, and these paragraphs also were omitted from the version that appears
on the Nexis computer database.
The C.I.A. Inspector General's report is available on the Internet at
www.odci.gov/cia/publications/cocaine2 (note that the report does not try to reach
definitive conclusions about whether contra-drug allegations were correct -- it deals
primarily with the C.I.A.'s response to information it received that the contras were
involved in drug-running).
80. On the protection and employment of Nazi war criminals by the U.S. and British
governments and the Vatican, see for example, Christopher Simpson, Blowback:
America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, New York: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1988 (on Rauff, the inventor and administrator of the gas truck execution
program which murdered approximately 250,000 people in unspeakable filth and agony,
see pp. 92-94; on Gehlen, Hitler's most senior intelligence officer on the brutal Eastern
Front, see pp. 40-72, 248-263, 279-283; on Barbie, the Gestapo's "Butcher of Lyons,"
see pp. 1 85-1 95; on the Vatican's role, see pp. 1 75-1 98). An excerpt from the book's
introduction (pp. xii-xiv):
In a nutshell, the Justice Department's study [in 1983] acknowledged that a U.S.
intelligence agency known as the Army Counterintelligence Corps (C.I.C.) had
recruited Schutzstaffel (S.S.) and Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie for espionage work in
early 1947; that the C.I.C. had hidden him from French war crimes investigators; and
that it had then spirited him out of Europe through a clandestine "ratline" - escape
route - run by a priest who was himself a fugitive from war crimes charges. . . .
Since the Barbie case broke open, however, there has been a chain of new
discoveries of Nazis and S.S. men protected by and, in some cases, brought to the
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 63
United States by U.S. intelligence agencies. One, for example, was S.S. officer Otto
von Bolschwing, who once instigated a bloody pogrom in Bucharest and served as a
senior aide to Adolf Eichmann. According to von Bolschwing's own statement in a
secret interview with U.S. Air Force investigators, in 1945 he volunteered his
services to the Army C.I.C., which used him for interrogation and recruitment of other
former Nazi intelligence officers. Later he was transferred to the C.I. A., which
employed him as a contract agent inside the Gehlen Organization, a group of
German intelligence officers that was being financed by the agency for covert
operations and intelligence gathering inside Soviet-held territory. The C.I. A. brought
the S.S. man to the United States in 1 954.
Following the revelation of the von Bolschwing affair, new evidence turned up
concerning U.S. recruitment of still other former S.S. men, Nazis, and collaborators.
According to army records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act
(F.O.I.A.), S.S. Obersturmfuhrer Robert Verbelen admitted that he had once been
sentenced to death in absentia for war crimes, including the torture of two U.S. Air
Force pilots. And, he said, he had long served in Vienna as a contract spy for the
U.S. Army, which was aware of his background. Other new information has been
uncovered concerning Dr. Kurt Blome, who admitted in 1945 that he had been a
leader of Nazi biological warfare research, a program known to have included
experimentation on prisoners in concentration camps. Blome, however, was
acquitted of crimes against humanity at a trial in 1 947 and hired a few years later by
the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to conduct a new round of biological weapons
research. Then there is the business of Blome's colleague Dr. Arthur Rudolph, who
was accused in sworn testimony at Nuremberg of committing atrocities at the Nazis'
underground rocket works near Nordhausen but was later given U.S. citizenship and
a major role in the U.S. missile program in spite of that record. Each of these
instances -- and there were others as well -- casts substantial doubt on the Justice
Department's assertion that what happened to Barbie was an "exception. . . ." The
fact is, U.S. intelligence agencies did know -- or had good reason to suspect -- that
many contract agents that they hired during the cold war had committed crimes
against humanity on behalf of the Nazis.
For other studies discussing the U.S. operations to protect and employ Nazi war
criminals, see for example, Mary Ellen Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen: the CIA.
Connection, Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1990; Erhard Dubringhaus,
Klaus Barbie: The Shocking Story Of How The U.S. Used This Nazi War Criminal As An
Intelligence Agent -- A First Hand Account, Washington: Acropolis, 1984; John Loftus,
The Belarus Secret, New York: Knopf, 1 982, ch. 5; Tom Bower, Klaus Barbie: The
"Butcher of Lyons," New York: Pantheon, 1984; Magnus Linklater, Isabel Hinton and
Neal Ascherson, The Nazi Legacy: Klaus Barbie and the Rise of International Fascism,
New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1984; Kai Hermann, "A Killer's Career," Stern (Germany), May
10 and following, 1984 (six-part series based upon declassified U.S. government
documents and interviews conducted in Bolivia); Tom Bower, The Paperclip
Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists, Boston: Little, Brown, 1987; Linda Hunt,
Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip,
1945-1990, New York: St. Martin's, 1991 ; John Gimbel, Science, Technology, and
Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1990; E.H. Cookridge, Gehlen: Spy of the Century, New York: Random
House, 1971 ; Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-
American Money Plot, New York: Delacorte, 1 983; Ladislas Farago, Aftermath: Martin
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 64
Bormann and the Fourth Reich, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 974; Christopher
Simpson, The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth
Century, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, pp. 236-239 (on the protection of Walter
Rauff); Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The C.I.A., Drugs and the
Press, London: Verso, 1998, chs. 6 and 7.
See also, Eugene J. Kolb [former U.S. counterintelligence corps officer and Chief of
Operations in the Augsburg region of Germany], "Army Counterintelligence's Dealings
With Klaus Barbie," Letter, New York Times, July 26, 1 983, p. A20 (defending the
employment of Barbie on the ground that "To our knowledge, his activities had been
directed against the underground French Communist Party and Resistance, just as we
in the postwar era were concerned with the German Communist Party and activities
inimical to American policies in Germany"). And see Michael McClintock, Instruments of
Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counter-insurgency and Counter-terrorism, 1940-
1990, New York: Pantheon, 1 992, especially ch. 3 (important study of U.S. intelligence's
absorption after World War II of Nazi methods and practitioners into U.S. special warfare
doctrine).
81 . On aid organizations' successes at the time of the U.S. intervention in Somalia,
see for example, Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omaar, "Doing Harm by Doing Good?: The
International Relief Effort in Somalia," Current History, May 1993, pp. 198-202. An
excerpt (p. 199):
It was abundantly clear at the time [of the U.S. intervention] that the famine was
almost over when the troops pushed inland from Mogadishu. One of the force's
unexpected problems was counseling soldiers bewildered by the absence of masses
of starving people. By the time he was forced to resign as special U.N. envoy in late
October after publicly criticizing the U.N. for its slow response to the crisis, Mohamed
Sahnoun was already recommending a halt to massive food imports. Excellent
rainfall meant that a good harvest was expected for January. Rain and the tenacity
of Somali farmers ended the famine, not foreign intervention.
Somalia Operation Restore Hope: A Preliminary Assessment, London: African
Rights, May 1 993, pp. 2-5 (whereas the U.S./U.N. intervention was justified by the claim
that 70 to 80 percent of food aid was being lost to criminal elements, the International
Committee of the Red Cross estimated aid losses at only 20 percent; other relief
agencies concurred, and described this level of aid loss as "pretty good" in comparison
with other relief operations).
82. On U.S. support for Siad Barre during the years before the Somalia
intervention, see for example, Catherine Besteman, Unraveling Somalia: Race,
Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1999. An excerpt (pp. 15, 17):
In order to maintain military bases in Somalia that could monitor affairs in the
[Persian] Gulf, the United States government provided $163.5 million in military
technology and four times that much in economic aid during 1980-88. By the late
1 980s, Somalia was receiving 20 percent of U.S. aid to Africa. . . . The value of arms
alone imported by Somalia [from the West] during the two decades of Barre's rule
totaled nearly two billion dollars. ... By the early 1 980s, the Somali state was one of
the most militarized in Africa. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 65
[In the late 1980s] the government killed tens of thousands of its own people;
almost half a million northern Somalis fled from Barre's repression into Ethiopia, and
over half a million were displaced within the north. By the final years of the 1980s
when the Somali state began to wage open war against its own citizens, its
international patrons could no longer ignore the fact that foreign aid supported
Somalia's extreme militarization and state repression.
83. On U.S. officials' frank acknowledgments of the Somalia intervention as a
Pentagon P.R. operation, see for example, John Lancaster, "For Marine Corps, Somalia
Operation Offers New Esprit; Mission Could Generate 'Good News' As Service
Confronts Shrinking Budgets," Washington Post, December 6, 1992, p. A34. An excerpt:
With a Marine amphibious strike force of 1 ,800 men forming the vanguard of the
planned U.S.-led military relief effort in Somalia, the smallest of the nation's military
services is suffused both with anxiety and a sense that a successful mission could
yield a public relations bonanza at just the right time. It is a sense that is shared by
all the services, as they seek to showcase their capabilities and usefulness at a time
when Congress is under intense pressure to produce post-Cold War defense
savings.
"I'd be lying if I said that never occurred to us," said Brig. Gen. Thomas V.
Draude, chief of public affairs for the Marine Corps. "Here's what looks like a good
news story. American service personnel are helping to solve an absolutely horrible
situation, and these are things the American people should be aware of." Along the
same lines, Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a
Thursday briefing on the Somalia operation delivered what he termed a "paid political
advertisement" on behalf of the administration's planned "base force" of 1 .6 million
uniformed personnel.
See also, Editorial, "It's More Than A Show," Guardian Weekly (U.K.), December 20,
1992, p. 18. An excerpt:
It is too easy to make a joke or draw too sweeping a conclusion about the antic
aspect of what happened when the U.S. Navy Seals and Marines went ashore in
Mogadishu last week. There they were in camouflage paint and combat gear, only to
be greeted -- and, it is said, temporarily blinded, not to say confounded and
embarrassed -- not by armed resistance but by the glare of T.V. lights and a
swarming civilian press corps already arrived.
84. On the Catholic population of Northern Ireland initially welcoming the British
forces in 1 969, see for example, John OBeirne Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland,
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2nd Edition, 1994, pp. 268-269.
85. On military casualties of the U.S. intervention in Somalia, see for example, Alex
de Waal, "U.S. War Crimes in Somalia," New Left Review, No. 230, July/August 1998,
pp. 131-144. An excerpt (p. 143):
There were times when [U.S. troops] shot at everything that moved, took
hostages, gunned their way through crowds of men and women, finished off any
wounded who were showing signs of life. Many people died in their homes, their tin
roofs ripped to shreds by high-velocity bullets and rockets. Accounts of the fighting
frequently contain such statements as this: "One moment there was a crowd, and the
next instant it was just a bleeding heap of dead and injured." Even with a degree of
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 66
restraint on the part of the gunners, the technology deployed by the U.S. Army was
such that carnage was inevitable.
One thing that the U.S. and U.N. never appreciated was that, as they escalated
the level of murder and mayhem, they increased the determination of Somalis to
resist and fight back. By the time of the 3 October battle, literally every inhabitant of
large areas of Mogadishu considered the U.N. and U.S. as enemies, and were ready
to take up arms against them. People who ten months before had welcomed the U.S.
Marines with open arms were now ready to risk death to drive them out.
Eric Schmitt, "Somali War Casualties May Be 10,000," New York Times, December
8, 1993, p. A1 4 (reporting U.S. government estimates of "6,000 to 10,000 Somali
casualties in four months last summer" alone -- with "two-thirds" of these being women
and children -- as compared to 26 American soldiers killed); Somalia: Human Rights
Abuses By The United Nations Forces, London: African Rights, July 1993, pp. 2-34
(reporting atrocities by U.S. and U.N. troops, including attacking a hospital, bombarding
political meetings, and shooting into crowds of demonstrators).
86. On Sahnoun's plan and his firing, see for example, Chris Giannou, "Reaping
the Whirlwind: Somalia After the Cold War," in Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck,
eds., Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order, New York: Olive Branch, 1 993,
pp. 350-361 at pp. 357-358. See also footnote 81 of this chapter.
87. On the requirement of international law that diplomatic means to avoid war
must be pursued, see for example, United Nations Charter, Article 33, reprinted in
Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, New York: Thunder's
Mouth, 1992, Appendix XI, pp. 290-291 .
88. Iraq's pre-war diplomatic overtures, all summarily rejected by the U.S.
government and essentially ignored by the U.S. media, included the following:
(1) On August 12, 1990, Saddam Hussein proposed a settlement linking Iraqi
withdrawal from Kuwait to withdrawal from other illegally occupied Arab lands: Syria
from Lebanon, and Israel from the territories it conquered in 1967. See for example,
Editorial, "The issue is still Kuwait," Financial Times (London), August 13, 1990, p. 12
(Iraq's proposal "may yet serve some useful purpose" in offering "a path away from
disaster . . . through negotiation"; the "immediate issue" is for "Iraq to get out of Kuwait,"
but however unsatisfactory Iraq's proposal may be as it stands, "The onus is now on
everyone involved, including Middle Eastern and western powers, to seize the initiative
and harness diplomacy to the show of political, military and economic force now on
display in the Gulf"). In the United States, the Iraqi proposal was dismissed with utter
derision: television news that day featured George Bush racing his power boat, jogging
furiously, playing tennis and golf, and otherwise expending his formidable energies on
important pursuits; the proposal merited only one dismissive sentence in a news story on
the blockade of Iraq in the next day's New York Times, and excerpts from the proposal
appeared without comment on an inside page. See Michael Gordon, "Bush Orders
Navy to Halt All Shipments of Iraq's Oil and Almost All Its Imports," New York Times,
August 1 3, 1 990, p. A1 ; A.P., "Confrontation in the Gulf -- Proposals by Iraqi President:
Excerpts From His Address," New York Times, August 13, 1990, p. A8.
(2) On August 19, 1990, Saddam Hussein proposed that the matter of Kuwait be left
an "Arab issue," to be dealt with by the Arab states alone, without external interference,
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 67
in the manner of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and Morocco's attempt to take over
Western Sahara. See for example, John Kifner, "Proposal by Iraq's President
Demanding U.S. Withdrawal," New York Times, August 20, 1990, p. A6 (with
accompanying text of the Iraqi proposal). Chomsky comments {Deterring Democracy,
New York: Hill and Wang, 1 991 , p. 1 91 ):
The proposal was dismissed on the reasonable grounds that, in this arena, Hussein
could hope to gain his ends by the threat and use of force. One relevant fact was
overlooked: the Iraqi dictator was again stealing a leaf from Washington's book. The
traditional U.S. position with regard to the Western Hemisphere is that "outsiders"
have no right to intrude. If the U.S. intervenes in Latin America or the Caribbean, it is
a hemispheric issue, to be resolved here, without external interference [i.e. the
"Monroe Doctrine"].
(3) On August 23, 1 990, a former high-ranking U.S. official delivered another Iraqi
proposal to National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft; this proposal, confirmed by the
emissary who relayed it and by memoranda, finally was made public in an article by
Knut Royce in the suburban New York newspaper Newsday on August 29, 1990.
According to sources involved and documents, Iraq offered to withdraw from Kuwait and
allow foreigners to leave in return for the lifting of sanctions, guaranteed access to the
Persian Gulf, and full control of the Rumailah oilfield "that extends slightly into Kuwaiti
territory from Iraq" (Royce), about two miles over a disputed border. Other terms of the
proposal, according to memoranda that Royce quotes, were that Iraq and the U.S.
negotiate an oil agreement "satisfactory to both nations' national security interests,"
"jointly work on the stability of the gulf," and develop a joint plan "to alleviate Iraq's
economical and financial problems." There was no mention of U.S. withdrawal from
Saudi Arabia, or other preconditions. A Bush administration official who specializes in
Mideast affairs described the proposal as "serious" and "negotiable." See Knut Royce,
"Secret Offer: Iraq Sent Pullout Deal to U.S.," Newsday, August 29, 1990, p. 3. The New
York Times noted the Newsday report briefly on the continuation page of an article on
another topic, citing government spokespersons who dismissed it as "baloney."
However, after framing the matter properly, the Times conceded that the story was
accurate, quoting White House sources who said the proposal "had not been taken
seriously because Mr. Bush demands the unconditional withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait."
The Times also noted quietly that "a well-connected Middle Eastern diplomat told the
New York Times a week ago [that is, on August 23rd] of a similar offer, but it, too, was
dismissed by the Administration." See R.W. Apple, Jr., "Confrontation in the Gulf: Opec
to Increase Oil Output to Offset Losses From Iraq; No U.S. Hostages Released," New
York Times, August 30, 1990, p. A1 . See also, Knut Royce, "U.S.: Iraqi Proposal Not
Worth a Response," Newsday, August 30, 1990, p. 6. An excerpt:
The administration has acknowledged Newsday reports that possible peace feelers
were received from Iraqi officials offering to withdraw from Kuwait in return for the
lifting of economic sanctions and other concessions, but they were dismissed as not
serious. Asked why they were not pursued to test whether they were serious, the
senior official said, "I don't know."
(4) On December 4, 1 990, the business pages of the New York Times and Wall
Street Journal reported a "near-panic of stock buying late in the day," after a British
television report of an Iraqi proposal to withdraw from Kuwait, apart from the disputed
Rumailah oilfields which extend two miles into Kuwait, with no other conditions except
Kuwaiti agreement to discuss a lease of the two Gulf islands after the withdrawal. See
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 68
Howard Hoffman, "Late Rumor of Iraqi Peace Offer Pulls Prices Higher in Buying
Binge," Wall Street Journal, December 5, 1990, p. C2; A.P., "Price of Crude Oil
Seesaws, Then Settles Higher at $29.1 5," New York Times, December 4, 1 990, p. D2.
The news-wires carried this story, but not the news sections of the major U.S.
newspapers. See for example, Lisa Genasci, "Baghdad Offers to Free Soviets, Kuwait
Deal Could Be in Works," A.P., December 4, 1 990 (Westlaw database # 1 990 WL
6034433). News reports in the U.S. did, however, express uneasiness that proposed
discussions with Iraq "might encourage some European partners to launch unhelpful
peace feelers." See for example, Gerald Seib, "Baker Mission Is a Risky Move for Bush;
Aides Fear Gambit May Damage Coalition," Wall Street Journal, December 3, 1990, p.
A16.
(5) In late December 1990, Iraq made another proposal, disclosed by U.S. officials
on January 2, 1 991 : an offer "to withdraw from Kuwait if the United States pledges not to
attack as soldiers are pulled out, if foreign troops leave the region, and if there is an
agreement on the Palestinian problem and on the banning of all weapons of mass
destruction in the region." Officials described the offer as "interesting," because it
dropped the border issues and "signals Iraqi interest in a negotiated settlement." A State
Department Mideast expert described the proposal as a "serious prenegotiation
position." The Newsday report notes that the U.S. "immediately dismissed the
proposal." See Knut Royce, "Iraq Offers Deal to Quit Kuwait," Newsday, January 3,
1991 , p. 5 (city edition, p. 4). This offer passed without mention in the national press,
and was barely noted elsewhere. The New York Times did, however, report on the
same day that P.L.O. leader Yasser Arafat, after consultations with Saddam Hussein,
indicated that neither of them "insisted that the Palestinian problem be solved before
Iraqi troops get out of Kuwait"; according to Arafat, "Mr. Hussein's statement Aug. 12,
linking an Iraqi withdrawal to an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
was no longer operative as a negotiating demand," all that was necessary was "a strong
link to be guaranteed by the five permanent members of the Security Council that we
have to solve all the problems in the Gulf, in the Middle East and especially the
Palestinian cause." See Patrick Tyler, "Arafat Eases Stand on Kuwait-Palestine Link,"
New York Times, January 3, 1991 , p. A8. Chomsky underscores the point {Deterring
Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1 991 , pp. 206-207):
Two weeks before the deadline for Iraqi withdrawal, then, it seemed that war might be
avoided on these terms: Iraq would withdraw completely from Kuwait with a U.S.
pledge not to attack withdrawing forces; foreign troops leave the region; the Security
Council indicates a serious commitment to settle other major regional problems.
Disputed border issues would be left for later consideration. The possibility was flatly
rejected by Washington, and scarcely entered the media or public awareness. The
U.S. and Britain maintained their commitment to force alone.
(6) On January 1 4, 1 991 , France also made a last-minute effort to avoid war by
proposing that the U.N. Security Council call for "a rapid and massive withdrawal" from
Kuwait along with a statement to Iraq that Council members would bring their "active
contribution" to a settlement of other problems of the region, "in particular, of the Arab-
Israeli conflict and in particular to the Palestinian problem by convening, at an
appropriate moment, an international conference" to assure "the security, stability and
development of this region of the world." The French proposal was supported by
Belgium (at the moment one of the rotating Security Council members), and Germany,
Spain, Italy, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and several non-aligned nations. The U.S. and
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 69
Britain rejected it (along with the Soviet Union, irrelevantly). American U.N. Ambassador
Thomas Pickering stated that the French proposal was unacceptable, because it went
beyond previous U.N. Security Council resolutions on the Iraqi invasion. See Paul
Lewis, "Confrontation in the Gulf: The U.N.; France and 3 Arab States Issue an Appeal
to Hussein," New York Times, January 1 5, 1 991 , p. A1 2; Michael Kranish et al., "World
waits on brink of war: Late effort at diplomacy in gulf fails," Boston Globe, January 1 6,
1991 , p. 1 ; Ellen Nimmons, A.P., "Last-ditch pitches for peace; But U.S. claims Iraqis
hold key," Houston Chronicle, January 1 5, 1 991 , p. 1 .
Citing the examples of U.S. policies towards South Africa in Namibia and Israel in
Lebanon, Chomsky remarks about the United States's summary rejection of the Iraqi
withdrawal proposals {Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1991 , p. 209):
It is entirely reasonable to take the position that Iraq should have withdrawn from
Kuwait forthwith, unconditionally, with no "linkage" to anything, and that it should pay
reparations and even be subjected to war crimes trials; that is a tenable position for
people who uphold the principles that yield these conclusions. But as a point of logic,
principles cannot be selectively upheld.
89. For the New York Times correspondent's statement, see Thomas Friedman,
"Confrontation in the Gulf: Behind Bush's Hard Line," New York Times, August 22, 1990,
p. A1 . An excerpt:
The Administration's rapid rejection of the Iraqi proposal for opening a diplomatic
track grows out of Washington's concern that should it become involved in
negotiations about the terms of an Iraqi withdrawal, America's Arab allies might feel
under pressure to give the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, a few token gains in
Kuwait to roll back his invasion and defuse the crisis.
90. For the Bush administration officials' statements that Iraqi proposals were
"serious" and "negotiable," see Knut Royce, "Secret Offer: Iraq Sent Pullout Deal to
U.S.," Newsday, August 29, 1990, p. 3; Knut Royce, "Iraq Offers Deal to Quit Kuwait,"
Newsday, January 3, 1 991 , p. 5 (city edition, p. 4).
91 . For the Newsday article, see section (3) of footnote 88 of this chapter. For the
New York Times's dismissal, see R.W. Apple, Jr., "Confrontation in the Gulf: Opec to
Increase Oil Output to Offset Losses From Iraq; No U.S. Hostages Released," New York
Times, August 30, 1 990, p. A1 . The reference to the Newsday story came near the end
of the article (note that in the second paragraph quoted here, the Times acknowledges
that it had information about a peace offer one week earlier):
Miss Tutwiler vigorously denied, and a ranking State Department official
dismissed as "baloney," a report published in Newsday today that a former high-
ranking United States official recently delivered a secret peace offer from Iraq to
Brent Scowcroft, the President's national security adviser. The offer reportedly
stipulated that Iraq would release all hostages and pull out of Kuwait if United Nations
sanctions were lifted, Iraq were guaranteed access to the Persian Gulf and sole
control of an oilfield that straddles the Iraq-Kuwaiti border was given to Baghdad.
Two White House officials said such a message, which they described as a
feeler, had in fact been delivered. But both said it had not been taken seriously
because Mr. Bush demands the unconditional withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait. A well-
connected Middle Eastern diplomat told The New York Times a week ago of a similar
offer, but it, too, was dismissed by the Administration. It involved a long-term Iraqi
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 70
lease on a Kuwaiti island at the mouth of the Shatt al Arab waterway and sizable
payments to Iraq by other Arab countries. "We're aware of many initiatives that are
being undertaken by various bodies," said Roman Popadiuk, the deputy White House
press secretary.
92. On popular opposition to the war in the U.S. before the bombing began, see for
example, Douglas Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV. War, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992,
pp. 250-263; Richard Morin, "Poll: Americans Expect War But Back Peace Conference,"
Washington Post, January 11,1 991 , p. A1 . An excerpt:
[According to a new Washington Post-AB.C. News poll . . . two-thirds of those
questioned said the administration should be more flexible on the question of an
international peace conference on the Middle East and support a meeting on Arab-
Israeli issues if Iraqi troops are withdrawn from Kuwait. . . .
Nearly nine of 10 Americans believe war is inevitable, but large majorities also
favor continued diplomatic talks up to and even beyond the Tuesday deadline the
United Nations Security Council has set for the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from
Kuwait, the Posf-A.B.C. poll found. . . . According to the poll, eight out of 10 said the
United States should hold additional talks with Iraq before Jan. 15, while 53 percent
say the search for a diplomatic solution should continue after the deadline expires.
Nearly nine of 10 said they support a meeting between U.N. Secretary General
Javier Perez de Cuellar and Iraqi leaders.
American Political Network Inc., "Poll Update -- A.B.CJPost. 66% O.K. Linking Arab-
Israeli Talks For Pullout," The Hotline, January 1 1 , 1991 (available on Nexis database).
The highly loaded question in this A.B.C./ Washington Post poll, which nonetheless
resulted in 66 percent of the American population supporting the diplomatic option,
asked:
The Bush administration opposes making any concessions to Iraq to get it to
withdraw from Kuwait, including an international conference on Arab- Israeli problems.
Some people say such a conference would be a concession that would reward Iraqi
aggression by linking the Arab- Israeli dispute with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Other
people say such an agreement would be worth it if it got Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait
without a war. Do you think the U.S. should agree to an Arab-Israeli conference if
Iraq agreed to withdraw from Kuwait, or not?
American Political Network Inc., "Poll Update -- C.B.SJN.Y.T: Majority Would O.K. Deal
On Arab-Israeli Talks," The Hotline, January 15, 1991 (available on Nexis database).
The even more loaded question in this C.B.SJNew York Times poll -- it only mentioned
Bush's view, without suggesting any other position -- nevertheless revealed that 59
percent of Americans stated that there should be further talks between Bush and
Saddam, 56 percent approved an international conference as a solution to the Gulf
Crisis, and 47 versus 37 percent believed that it would be an "acceptable solution" if
Kuwait offered a piece of territory to Iraq in exchange for withdrawal. Furthermore,
support for a war shifted radically depending on projected numbers of U.S. casualties,
with only 37 percent saying that war would be worth it if U.S. casualties climbed into the
thousands.
Chomsky adds that, had the actual existence of Iraq's peace proposals and the
idea that negotiated withdrawal was possible received reasonable coverage by the U.S.
media, the two-to-one popular approval rating for that way of addressing the Gulf Crisis
surely would have been higher.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 71
93. On pre-war depictions of Iraq as a mighty military power, see for example, John
R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, New York:
Hill and Wang, 1 992. An excerpt (pp. 1 72-1 73):
The U.S. government claimed that by mid-September there were 250,000 Iraqi
troops in Kuwait poised to invade Saudi Arabia. By early January, the number had
allegedly grown to 540,000 in and around Kuwait, all formidably armed and eager to
slaughter invading American troops. From Administration press releases one could
imagine a sophisticated Iraqi Maginot Line [the elaborate defensive barrier set up
along northeast France in the 1930s] on the southern border of Kuwait, backed by the
always "elite" or "crack" Republican Guard. Although the precise strength of Iraqi
troops in the war zone may never be known, the real number turned out to be far
lower. . . . The focus by the government ~ and the docile media - on sheer numbers
of Iraqi troops obscured the pathetic quality of the conscripted foot soldiers who
made up the better part of the enemy forces. Chuck Akers of the 503 M.P.
Company, Third Armored Division, told me that many of the enemy prisoners of war
(E.P.W.s) taken in the first day of the ground invasion were ill-equipped, starving, and
demoralized - in short, poor specimens of fighting men. Among their number was an
eleven-year-old boy, several soldiers with feet so swollen they had to have their
boots cut off, and many who were carrying only blank ammunition.
As with the baby incubator story [i.e. a public relations fabrication in which a
young girl, later discovered to be the Kuwaiti Ambassador's daughter, testified to
Congress that she had seen the Iraqis kill Kuwaiti babies by taking them out of
incubators], there was virtual unanimous acceptance by the media of the allegedly
enormous manpower behind Saddam's territorial ambition. Only the St. Petersburg
Times, a well- respected Florida daily under independent ownership, challenged the
government line. In a top-of-front-page story published on Sunday, January 6,
Washington bureau reporter Jean Heller reported that satellite photos of the border
between southern Kuwait and Saudi Arabia taken on September 1 1 and 13, 1990, by
a Soviet company revealed "no evidence of a massive Iraqi presence in Kuwait in
September. . . ." "A number" of American news organizations had bought the same
pictures and shown them to various experts, [satellite imagery expert Peter]
Zimmerman said, and "all of us agreed that we couldn't see anything in the way of
military activity in the pictures." But again cautiousness overcame curiosity among
the media.
Reuters, "Bush: No Appeasement," Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1990, p. P1 (quoting
President Bush's comparison of Saddam Hussein to "Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before
the onset of World War II," and his assertion that Saddam had "massed an enormous
war machine on the Saudi border, capable of initiating hostilities with little or no
additional preparation" including "surface-to-surface missiles").
For samples of the U.S. media's sudden demonization of Saddam Hussein, see
Marjorie Williams, "Monster in the Making: Saddam Hussein -- From Unknown to Arch-
Villain in a Matter of Days," Washington Post, August 9, 1 990, p. D1 .
On the long tradition of "exaggeration of American vulnerability" from the nineteenth
century through World War II, see John Thompson, "The Exaggeration of American
Vulnerability: The Anatomy of a Tradition," Diplomatic History, Winter 1 992, pp. 23-43.
In reality, the Gulf War was simply a slaughter. For details on the carnage, see
footnote 94 of this chapter.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 72
94. On the Gulf Slaughter, see for example, Patrick J. Sloyan, "Buried Alive: U.S.
Tanks Used Plows To Kill Thousands In Gulf War Trenches," Newsday (New York),
September 1 2, 1 991 , p. 1 . An excerpt:
The U.S. Army division that broke through Saddam Hussein's defensive frontline
used plows mounted on tanks and combat earthmovers to bury thousands of Iraqi
soldiers -- some still alive and firing their weapons -- in more than 70 miles of
trenches, according to U.S. Army officials. . . . The unprecedented tactic has been
hidden from public view. . . . Not a single American was killed during the attack that
made an Iraqi body count impossible. . . .
Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Vulcan armored carriers straddled the trench lines
and fired into the Iraqi soldiers as the tanks covered them with mounds of sand. "I
came through right after the lead company," [Col. Anthony] Moreno said. "What you
saw was a bunch of buried trenches with peoples' arms and things sticking out of
them. . . ." [General Norman] Schwarzkopf's staff has privately estimated that, from
air and ground attacks, between 50,000 and 75,000 Iraqis were killed in their
trenches. . . . Only one Iraqi tank round was fired at the attackers, Moreno said.
Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein, Washington Babylon, London: Verso, 1996.
An excerpt (pp. 1 62-1 63):
[T]he Iraqi army enjoyed the largest mass desertions in history, with between
125,000 and 175,000 soldiers prudently departing the front before ground combat
began. Saddam Hussein had stuffed the front with segregated units of Shi'ite and
Kurd troops, so when it became clear that they were merely cannon fodder, most
returned to their villages. Some 25,000 troops remained to confront 400,000 Allied
soldiers when the ground war began. The U.S. -led force could have walked in with
swords.
Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, New York: Thunder's
Mouth, 1992 (an extensive and chilling review). An excerpt (pp. xvi, 31 , 38, 40-42, 47-
48,51,59,61,64,70):
Before the assault was over U.S. planes flew more than 109,000 sorties, raining
88,000 tons of bombs, the equivalent of seven Hiroshimas. . . . The bulk of the Iraqi
troops were draftees, ranging in age from 16 to 42, and with no deep-felt loyalty to the
military. The percentage of its armed forces that were well trained and equipped was
very low. . . . Iraq lost between 125,000 and 150,000 soldiers. The U.S. has said it
lost 148 in combat, and of those, 37 were caused by friendly fire. ... U.S. planes
pounded troops in the Kuwaiti theater of operations and southern Iraq with carpet-
bombing, fuel-air explosives, and other illegal weaponry. Iraq never mustered a
single significant offensive strike or any effective defensive action. When the ground
attack came, the surviving Iraqis were incapable even of self defense. In a news
briefing on February 23, the eve of the ground war, General Thomas Kelly said,
"There won't be many of them left." He believed most Iraqi troops were dead or had
withdrawn. When U.S. tanks and armored vehicles finally did roll, the soldiers
reported driving for miles without encountering live Iraqi forces. . . .
No aerial defense of the helpless country was ordered because Iraqi military
officials knew that exposing its planes in the air would be suicidal. The Iraqi anti-
aircraft display, shown regularly on C.N.N., created the impression that ground-to-air
defenses were protecting Baghdad. However, this fire turned out to be essentially
useless. . . . [T]he Pentagon reported that despite the 109,876 sorties flown during
the entire war, only 38 aircraft were lost - a rate lower than the normal accident rate
in combat training. . . . The aerial assault continued until no targets remained that
were worth the ordnance. Pilots reported a shortage of targets for days. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 73
Among the explosives that U.S. planes dropped on troops were napalm bombs,
fuel-air explosives (F.A.E.s), and cluster bombs. . . . The Washington Post reported
on February 1 8, 1 991 that "wounded Iraqi soldiers were dying for lack of treatment
amid conditions that recalled the American Civil War." If wounded soldiers were
moved out of the lines, treatment was further impaired because U.S. planes bombed
at least five Iraqi military hospitals. . . . [T]he following testimony came from Mike
Erlich of the Military Counseling Network at the March-April 1991 European
Parliament hearings on the Gulf War: "[H]undreds, possibly thousands, of Iraqi
soldiers began walking toward the U.S. position unarmed, with their arms raised in an
attempt to surrender. However, the orders for this unit were not to take any
prisoners. . . . The commander of the unit began the firing by shooting an anti-tank
missile through one of the Iraqi soldiers. This is a missile designed to destroy tanks,
but it was used against one man. At that point, everybody in the unit began shooting.
. . ." As one soldier said, it was like slaughtering animals in a pen. . . . Apache
helicopters raked the Republican Guard Hammurabi Division with laser-guided
Hellfire missiles. "Say hello to Allah," one American was recorded as saying
moments before a Hellfire obliterated one of the 102 vehicles racked up by the
Apaches. . . . "Yee-HAH," said one voice. . . .
The surgical strike myth was a cynical way to conceal the truth. The bombing
was a deadly, calculated, and deeply immoral strategy to bring Iraq to its knees by
destroying the essential facilities and support systems of the entire society. . . . The
overall plan was described in the June 23, 1991, Washington Post. After interviews
with several of the war's top planners and extensive research into how targets were
determined, reporter Barton Gellman wrote: "Many of the targets were chosen only
secondarily to contribute to the military defeat of [Iraq]. . . . Military planners hoped
the bombing would amplify the economic and psychological impact of international
sanctions on Iraqi society. . . . They deliberately did great harm to Iraq's ability to
support itself as an industrial society. . . ." Compounded by sanctions, the damage to
life-support systems in Iraq killed more after the war than direct attacks did during the
war. . . .
Probably 1,500 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed when the
Amariyah civilian bomb shelter was hit by two bombs in the early morning hours of
February 13, 1991. .. . Neighborhood residents heard screams as people tried to get
out of the shelter. They screamed for four minutes. Then the second bomb hit, killing
almost everybody. The screaming ceased. The U.S. public saw sanitized, heavily
edited footage of the bombed shelter. But the Columbia Journalism Review reported
in its May/June 1991 issue that much more graphic images were shown on news
reports in Jordan and Baghdad. . . . The Review obtained the footage via unedited
C.N.N, feeds and Baghdad's W.T.N. , and described it as follows: "This reporter
viewed the unedited Baghdad feeds. . . . They showed scenes of incredible carnage.
Nearly all the bodies were charred into blackness; in some cases the heat had been
so great that entire limbs were burned off. Among the corpses were those of at least
six babies and ten children, most of them so severely burned that their gender could
not be determined. Rescue workers collapsed in grief."
On the U.S. attack on Iraq's civilian infrastructure, see for example, Eric Rouleau,
"The View From France: America's Unyielding Policy toward Iraq," Foreign Affairs, Vol.
74, No. 1 , January/February 1995, pp. 59f. An excerpt (pp. 61-62):
[T]he Iraqi people, who were not consulted about the invasion, have paid the price for
their government's madness. . . . Iraqis understood the legitimacy of a military action
to drive their army from Kuwait, but they have had difficulty comprehending the Allied
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 74
rationale for using air power to systematically destroy or cripple Iraqi infrastructure
and industry: electric power stations (92 percent of installed capacity destroyed),
refineries (80 percent of production capacity), petrochemical complexes,
telecommunications centers (including 135 telephone networks), bridges (more than
100), roads, highways, railroads, hundreds of locomotives and boxcars full of goods,
radio and television broadcasting stations, cement plants, and factories producing
aluminum, textiles, electric cables, and medical supplies. The losses were estimated
by the Arab Monetary Fund to be $190 billion.
Chomsky remarks {Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1 991 , p. 41 0):
[The] first component [of the U.S.-led attack on Iraq on January 16, 1991] targeted
the civilian infrastructure, including power, sewage, and water systems; that is, a
form of biological warfare, having little relation to driving Iraq from Kuwait -- rather,
designed for long-term U.S. political ends. This too is not war, but state terrorism, on
a colossal scale.
For the best general account of the Gulf conflict, see Dilip Hiro, Desert Shield to
Desert Storm: the Second Gulf War, London: HarperCollins, 1 992.
95. On the rebel Iraqi generals' rejected pleas, see for example, John Simpson,
"Surviving In The Ruins," Spectator (U.K.), August 10, 1991, pp. 8-10. An excerpt:
Our programme [Panorama on England's B.B.C.-1] has found evidence that
several Iraqi generals made contact with the United States to sound out the likely
American response if they took the highly dangerous step of planning a coup against
Saddam. But now Washington faltered. It had been alarmed by the scale of the
uprisings [against Saddam Hussein] in the north and south. For several years the
Americans had refused to have any contact with the Iraqi opposition groups, and
assumed that revolution would lead to the break-up of Iraq as a unitary state. The
Americans believed that the Shi'as wanted to secede to Iran and that the Kurds
would want to join up with the Kurdish people of Turkey. No direct answer was
returned to the Iraqi generals; but on 5 March, only four days after President Bush
had spoken of the need for the Iraqi people to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the White
House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, "We don't intend to get involved ... in Iraq's
internal affairs. . . ."
An Iraqi general who escaped to Saudi Arabia in the last days of the uprising in
southern Iraq told us that he and his men had repeatedly asked the American forces
for weapons, ammunition and food to help them carry on the fight against Saddam's
forces. The Americans refused. As they fell back on the town of Nasiriyeh, close to
the allied positions, the rebels approached the Americans again and requested
access to an Iraqi arms dump behind the American lines at Tel al-Allahem. At first
they were told they could pass through the lines. Then the permission was rescinded
and, the general told us, the Americans blew up the arms dump. American troops
disarmed the rebels.
Jim Drinkard, "Senate Report Says Lack of U.S. Help Derailed Possible Iraq Coup,"
A.P., May 2, 1 991 (Westlaw database # 1 991 WL 61 8441 2). An excerpt:
Defections by senior officials in Saddam Hussein's army - and possibly a coup
attempt against Saddam - were shelved in March because the United States failed to
support the effort, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report. . .
. [T]he United States "continued to see the opposition in caricature," fearing that the
Kurds sought a separate state and the Shi'as wanted an Iranian-style Islamic
fundamentalist regime, the report concluded. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 75
"The public snub of Kurdish and other Iraqi opposition leaders was read as a
clear indication the United States did not want the popular rebellion to succeed," the
document stated. . . . The refusal to meet with the Iraqi opposition was accompanied
by "background statements from administration officials that they were looking for a
military, not a popular, alternative to Saddam Hussein," the committee staff report
said. . . . The United States resisted not only the entreaties of opposition figures, but
of Syria and Saudi Arabia, which favored aiding the Iraqi dissidents militarily, the
report contended.
A.P., "Senior Iraqis offered to defect, report says," Boston Globe, May 3, 1991 , p. 8;
"Report: U.S. Stymied Defections," Newsday (New York), May 3, 1 991 , p. 1 5; Tony
Horwitz, "Forgotten Rebels: After Heeding Calls To Turn on Saddam, Shiites Feel
Betrayed," Wall Street Journal Europe, December 31 , 1 991 , p. 1 .
For more on the immediate decision by the U.S. to allow Saddam Hussein to
massacre the rebelling Shiites and Kurds -- in part using attack helicopters, as expressly
permitted by U.S. commanders -- at the conclusion of the Gulf War, see for example,
Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals' War: The Inside
Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, Boston: Little Brown, 1995, pp. 446-456 (on Saudi
Arabia's rejected plan to assist the Shiites who were trying to overthrow Saddam, see
pp. 454-456).
96. For Friedman's article, see Thomas Friedman, "A Rising Sense That Iraq's
Hussein Must Go," New York Times, July 7, 1 991 , section 4, p. 1 . The full statement:
[T]he fact is that President Bush has been ambivalent about Mr. Hussein's fate
since the day the war ended. Mr. Bush inadvertently acknowledged the source of
that ambivalence last week when he was asked whether he was disappointed about
the lack of democratization in Kuwait. "The war wasn't fought about democracy in
Kuwait," Mr. Bush bluntly retorted.
The war was, instead, fought to restore the status quo. And, as every American
policymaker knows, before Mr. Hussein invaded Kuwait he was a pillar of the gulf
balance of power and status quo preferred by Washington. His iron fist
simultaneously held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies
Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and it prevented Iranian Islamic fundamentalists from
sweeping over the eastern Arab world. It was only when the Iraqi dictator decided to
use his iron fist to dominate Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that he became a threat. But as
soon as Mr. Hussein was forced back into his shell, Washington felt he had become
useful again for maintaining the regional balance and preventing Iraq from
disintegrating.
That was why Mr. Bush never supported the Kurdish and Shiite rebellions against
Mr. Hussein, or for that matter any democracy movement in Iraq. . . . Sooner or later,
Mr. Bush argued, sanctions would force Mr. Hussein's generals to bring him down,
and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta
without Saddam Hussein.
For a similar explanation of the rationale for maintaining Saddam Hussein in
power, see Alan Cowell, "After The War: Kurds Assert Few Outside Iraq Wanted Them
to Win," New York Times, April 1 1 , 1 991 , p. A1 1 . An excerpt:
It is, perhaps, one of the most savage realizations of the Persian Gulf crisis and
the subsequent turmoil in both north and south Iraq that the allied campaign against
President Hussein brought the United States and its Arab coalition partners to a
strikingly unanimous view: whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 76
and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did those who have
suffered his repression. . . .
At the same time, the United States matched its refusal to be drawn into the civil
war with a refusal to talk to those involved in fighting it. When Secretary of States
James A. Baker 3d arrives here on Thursday to discuss the Middle East with
President Hafez el-Assad, he will find waiting for him a letter from the opposition
groups requesting a meeting. "We hope that your Government will respond
positively" to the request, the letter, delivered to the United States Embassy here,
says. So far, Iraqi exiles say, there has been no reply to it and the embassy's doors
remain closed to them.
Chomsky remarks about this system of "stability" and "regional balance" in the
Middle East based upon the Arab client-states {Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill
and Wang, 1992, p. 417):
[W]ho are these "Arab coalition partners"? Answer: six are family dictatorships,
established by the Anglo-American settlement to manage Gulf oil riches in the
interests of the foreign masters, what British imperial managers called an "Arab
fagade" for the real rulers. The seventh is Syria's Hafez el-Assad, a minority-based
tyrant indistinguishable from Saddam Hussein. That these partners should share
Washington's preference for Saddam Hussein's variety of "stability" is hardly a
surprise. The last of the "coalition partners," Egypt, is the only one that could be
called "a country." Though a tyranny, it has a degree of internal freedom.
For the British reference to the "Arab fagade" ~ a state "ruled and administered under
British guidance and controlled by a native Mohammedan, and, as far as possible, by an
Arab staff" (the words are those of Lord Curzon) -- see William Stivers, Supremacy and
Oil: Iraq, Turkey, and the Anglo-American World Order, 1918-1930, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1 982, p. 28. Curzon further explained that "there should be no actual
incorporation of conquered territory in the dominions of the conqueror, but that the
absorption may be veiled by constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a sphere of
influence, a buffer State, and so on" (p. 34). See also, William Stivers, America's
Confrontation with Revolutionary Change in the Middle East, 1948-83, London:
Macmillan, 1 986 (on the U.S. policy of defending the conservative status quo in the
Middle East since World War II).
97. On Iraqi children killed by the embargo, see for example, Anthony Amove, ed.,
Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War, Cambridge, MA: South
End, 2000. An excerpt (pp. 60, 65):
[l]n 1995 the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported that the military
devastation of Iraq and the Security Council embargo had been responsible for the
deaths of more than 560,000 children. The World Health Organization confirmed this
figure and so, inadvertently, did the U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, when
she was asked on the C.B.S. program 60 Minutes if the death of more than half a
million children was a price worth paying. "[W]e think the price is worth it," she
replied. . . . Former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Denis Halliday has
remarked that the death toll is "probably closer now to 600,000 and that's over the
period of 1990-1998. If you include adult, it's well over 1 million Iraqi people."
Merrill Goozner, "U.S. Seems To Be Sole Supporter Of Embargo Against Iraq; Allies
Cite Desire For Business, Concern For Children In Seeking Ties," Chicago Tribune,
September 5, 1996, p. 14. An excerpt:
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 77
The embargo -- a ban on all forms of international trade, including food and medicine -
- is the most sweeping set of economic sanctions the U.N. has ever imposed on a
nation. . . . Human rights groups, who are no fans of the brutal Iraqi regime, the
U.N.'s World Food Program and UNICEF have reported the continuing impact of the
embargo on Iraqi children: an estimated 500,000 deaths since 1991, primarily from
intestinal disorders caused by drinking impure water in their weakened, malnourished
state.
Kathryn Casa, "Embargo brings death to 500,000 children in Iraq," National Catholic
Reporter, March 3, 1995, p. 9. An excerpt:
[If] the blockade continues, 1.5 million more children could eventually suffer
malnutrition or a variety of unchecked illnesses because antibiotics and other
standard medicines are scarce. . . . Among the five permanent members of the
[U.N.] Security Council, only ... the United States and Britain are opposed [to ending
the embargo]. . . .
[A] two-day Athens conference featured grim photographs of Iraqi children, their
bellies bloated from malnutrition, and of pitifully tiny infants, too weak to cry, their
limbs as thin as sticks and their huge eyes reflecting a serenity that too often
precedes death. . . . [T]here were hundreds of pages of material on the tragic effects
of the embargo and on Iraq's contention that it has complied with all U.N. resolutions.
See also, Eric Hoskins, "Making the Desert Glow," Op-Ed, New York Times, January 21,
1 993, p. A25 (a Harvard Study Team estimated that 50,000 children died in the first eight
months of 1991 alone, many from the effects of radioactive artillery shells; about 40 tons
of depleted uranium was dispersed in Iraq and Kuwait during the war).
On the U.S. and British insistence on maintaining the Iraq embargo, see for
example, Eric Rouleau, "The View From France: America's Unyielding Policy toward
Iraq," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 1 , January/February 1995, pp. 59f. An excerpt (pp. 66-
67):
In November 1993, two years after Resolutions 706 and 712, Saddam Hussein
decided in desperation to comply fully with the conditions set by the Security Council
to lift the embargo. ... A commission headed by the Swedish diplomat Rolf Ekeus
recognized that the Iraqis had cooperated fully. ... If the Security Council were to
respect the commitment it had clearly made, the oil embargo would have been lifted
immediately or, at most, after a probational period set by the Security Council. Then
the United States, backed by the United Kingdom, decided to "change the rules," as a
New York Times editorial of August 2, 1994, put it. The Clinton administration
decided that sanctions would remain in place as long as Iraq did not implement all the
U.N. resolutions, particularly those concerning respect for human rights and
recognition of Kuwait's sovereignty and borders. These new demands, however
justifiable, did not appear in the sole U.N. text referring explicitly to the lifting of the oil
embargo. . . .
In November 1994, under pressure from Russia and France, Iraq recognized the
sovereignty and frontiers of Kuwait. As expected, the measure, conceived as a
political concession to the United States, was not judged sufficient by Washington.
The prevailing sense in Paris was that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to
change the mind of the Clinton administration, whose determination to follow its own
policy had been clear in recent months.
98. For the Foreign Affairs article, see Eric Rouleau, "The View From France:
America's Unyielding Policy toward Iraq," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 1 ,
January/February 1995, pp. 59f. An excerpt (p. 68):
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 78
It is widely agreed, even among the Iraqi opposition, that Saddam Hussein's regime
is more secure today than it was four years ago. . . . Reliable sources in Baghdad
now maintain that the Iraqi people, absorbed by the daily struggle to survive the
embargo, have neither the desire nor the energy to rise up against their government,
which they increasingly perceive as a victim of a superpower's agenda.
On the death toll, see footnotes 94 and 97 of this chapter.
99. On Bush's favorable attitude towards Saddam Hussein until the Kuwait
invasion, see for example, Alan Friedman, Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the
White House Illegally Armed Iraq, New York: Bantam Books, 1 993 (a detailed and
densely documented history of U.S. support for Saddam until months before the Gulf
War); Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas, "U.S. Loans Indirectly Financed Iraq Military,"
Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1 992, p. A1 ("Classified documents show that Bush,
first as vice president and then as President, intervened repeatedly over a period of
almost a decade to obtain special assistance for Saddam Hussein -- financial aid as well
as access to high-tech equipment that was critical to Iraq's quest for nuclear and
chemical arms"; this relationship continued "[u]ntil the eve of the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait"). See also footnote 100 of this chapter.
1 00. On Bush's efforts into 1 990 to continue loan guarantees for Saddam Hussein,
see for example, Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas, "Bush Secret Effort Helped Iraq
Build Its War Machine," Los Angeles Times, February 23, 1 992, p. A1 . An excerpt:
In the fall of 1989, at a time when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was only nine months
away and Saddam Hussein was desperate for money to buy arms, President Bush
signed a top-secret National Security Decision directive ordering closer ties with
Baghdad and opening the way for $1 billion in new aid, according to classified
documents and interviews. . . . Getting new aid from Washington was critical for Iraq
in the waning months of 1989 and the early months of 1990 because international
bankers had cut off virtually all loans to Baghdad. . . .
In addition to clearing the way for new financial aid, senior Bush aides as late as
the spring of 1 990 overrode concern among other government officials and insisted
that Hussein continue to be allowed to buy so-called "dual use" technology ~
advanced equipment that could be used for both civilian and military purposes. The
Iraqis were given continued access to such equipment, despite emerging evidence
that they were working on nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction.
"Iraq is not to be singled out," National Security Council official Richard Haas
declared at a high-level meeting in April, 1 990, according to participants' notes, when
the Commerce Department proposed curbing Iraqi purchases of militarily sensitive
technology. . . . And the pressure in 1989 and 1990 to give Hussein crucial financial
assistance and maintain his access to sophisticated U.S. technology were not
isolated incidents. Rather, classified documents obtained by The Times show, they
reflected a long-secret pattern of personal efforts by Bush - both as President and
as vice president - to support and placate the Iraqi dictator. . . .
[Classified records show that Bush's efforts on Hussein's behalf continued well
beyond the end of the Iran-Iraq War and persisted in the face of increasingly
widespread warnings from inside the American government that the overall policy
had become misdirected. . . . [On April 19, 1990, the] White House National Security
Council thwart[ed] efforts by [the] Commerce Department to stem the flow of U.S.
technology to Iraq. . . . [A]s late as July 9, 1990, April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 79
to Iraq, assured Iraqi officials that the Bush Administration was still trying to get the
second $500 million [of the $1 billion in loan guarantees] released, according to a
classified cable.
Alan Friedman, "U.S. backed Dollars 1bn Iraqi loan prior to invasion of Kuwait,"
Financial Times (London), May 3, 1 991 , section 1 , p. 1 . An excerpt:
The Bush Administration pushed through a Dollars 1bn (Pounds 568m) loan
guarantee to Iraq for farm exports just 10 months before the invasion of Kuwait
despite being presented with reports of widespread abuse of U.S. funds by Baghdad
at the time. . . . The debate over the issue came to a climax at a White House
meeting on November 8, 1989 when senior officials from the Federal Reserve, U.S.
Treasury and Commerce Departments all objected to the Dollars 1bn guarantee to
back U.S. farm exports to Iraq. The reasons cited, according to participants at the
meeting, included the view that Iraq was no longer creditworthy. ... Mr. Robert
Kimmitt, the under-secretary of state, told the White House meeting that abruptly
terminating the Dollars 1bn of loan guarantees for Iraq would be "contrary to the
president's intentions."
For exposures of other such links, see for example, Douglas Frantz and Murray
Waas, "Bush Had Long History Of Support For Iraq Aid," Los Angeles Times, February
24, 1992, p. A1 (providing further detailed evidence, in particular of Bush's personal
interventions to obtain Export-Import Bank loan credits for Iraq); Paul Houston, "Panel To
Probe Reports On Aid To Iraq," Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1992, p. A10; Leslie H.
Gelb, "Bush's Iraqi Blunder," Op-Ed, New York Times, May 4, 1992, p. A17; Gary
Milhollin, "Building Saddam Hussein's Bomb," New York Times Magazine, March 8,
1992, section 6, p. 30; Alan Friedman, "West's guilty role in arming Saddam:
Revelations this week in London and Washington imply high-level cover ups of illegal
weapon deals," Financial Times (London), November 14, 1992, p. I; Alan Friedman, "A
paper trail of troubles: The Bush administration is coming under fire as Congress
investigates alleged transfers of arms and money to Iraq," Financial Times (London),
August 6, 1992, p. 14; Alan Friedman, Lionel Barber, Tom Flannery and Eric Reguly,
"Arms For Iraq: Saddam's secret South African connection ~ A steady flow of illegal
missile technology was exported from the U.S. with full C.I.A. knowledge," Financial
Times (London), May 24, 1991 , p. 6; Lionel Barber and Alan Friedman, "Arms to Iraq; A
fatal attraction ~ Under the nose of the White House, kickbacks and illegal deals funded
Saddam," Financial Times (London), May 3, 1991 , section I, p. 2; Bruce Ingersoll,
"G.A.O. Is Critical Of Export Credits Extended To Iraq," Wall Street Journal, November
21 , 1 990, p. A1 6. See also, Ralph Atkins, Emma Tucker and Alan Friedman, "U.K.
allowed export to Iraq of mustard gas chemicals," Financial Times (London), July 29,
1991 , p. 1 ; James Adams and Nick Rufford, "Britain sold 'mustard gas' to Saddam,"
Sunday Times (London), July 28, 1 991 , p. 1 .
101. On U.S. tolerance of Saddam after the Gulf War, see footnotes 95 and 96 of
this chapter.
102. On the twenty-year U.S. and Israeli campaign to reject Palestinian rights, see
footnotes 1 04 and 1 1 1 of this chapter; chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnotes 48 and 49; and
chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnote 83.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 80
1 03. The connection between the Gulf War and a change in the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict was commonly drawn by officials and commentators, both during and after the
war. See for example, Henry A. Kissinger, "A Postwar Agenda," Newsweek, January
28, 1 991 , p. 44. An excerpt:
[T]he United States should move to implement a number of measures in the
immediate aftermath of the war. . . . [P]erhaps most importantly, a new balance of
power will revive prospects for progress on the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . [W]ith
Saddam defeated, moderate Arab leaders will gain in stature, America's credibility will
be enhanced and Israel will have a breathing space. This new equation should be
translated into a major diplomatic effort within a few months of victory. ... I would
much prefer a diplomatic process in which the United States, the moderate Arab
countries and Israel are the principal participants. . . . The aftermath of an allied
victory over Iraq will offer a perhaps never-to-recur opportunity.
Andrew Rosenthal, "Bush Vows to Tackle Middle East Issues," New York Times,
January 29, 1 991 , p. A1 3 (quoting George Bush: "When this war is over, the United
States, its credibility and its reliability restored, will have a key leadership role in helping
to bring peace to the rest of the Middle East").
For Chomsky's article referred to in the text, see Noam Chomsky, "Aftermath:
Voices From Below," Z Magazine, October 1991 , pp. 19-28. An excerpt (pp. 25-26):
Decoding the rhetoric of political discourse, we see a picture that looks like this. The
U.S. triumph in the Gulf has enabled it to establish the rejectionist position it has
maintained in international isolation (apart from Israel). The peace process that the
world has sought for many years, with surprising unanimity, can now be consigned to
the ash heap of history. The U.S. can at last run its own conference, completely
excluding its rivals Europe and Japan, always a major goal of U.S. diplomacy in the
Middle East, as Kissinger observed. With the Soviet Union gone from the scene,
Syria has accepted the fact that the U.S. rules the region alone and has abandoned
what is called its "rejectionist stance" in U.S. rhetoric. In this case, the term refers to
Syria's support for the international consensus calling for settlement on the
internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders and full guarantees for all states in
the region, including Israel and a new Palestinian state.
For a more in-depth discussion of the subject, see Noam Chomsky, "Middle East
Diplomacy," Z Magazine, December 1991 , pp. 29-41 .
See also, R.W. Apple Jr., "The Middle East Talks: How Sweet A Victory?," New
York Times, October 31 , 1 991 , p. A1 6. An excerpt:
Many months after the event, George Bush and the United States today plucked
the fruits of victory in the Persian Gulf war. . . . Critics have suggested that the
United States achieved far too little in the war. . . . This morning it was clear that a
very great deal had changed. . . .
It was not only the energy and the diplomatic skills of Secretary of State James
A. Baker 3d that created the remarkable tableau [of the Madrid Peace Conference on
the Middle East], with mortal enemies arranged around the same table, that Mr. Bush
saw before him in the splendid Royal Palace this morning; all of his labors would
have counted for very little without the seismic shifts in the global order of things. . . .
The United States is the only credible outside power in the region. The gulf war also
changed the internal military balance, not only by removing Iraq from the equation, at
least for the moment, but also by demonstrating that high-tech American weapons,
more available to Israel than to the Arabs, again at least for the moment, were the
future of warfare.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 81
104. The General Assembly resolutions calling for recognition of Palestinian rights
can be found in the annual U.N. publication Resolutions and Decisions Adopted by the
General Assembly, New York: United Nations.
See also, Cheryl A. Rubenberg, "The U.S.-P.L.O. Dialogue: Continuity or Change
in American Policy?," Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 1 1 , No. 4, Fall 1 989, pp. 1 -58,
especially pp. 18-32; Nabeel Abraham, "The Conversion of Chairman Arafat," American-
Arab Affairs, No. 31 , Winter 1 989-1 990, pp. 53-69.
1 05. For George Bush's statement, see for example, Rick Atkinson, "Bush: Iraq
Won't Decide Timing of Ground War," Washington Post, February 2, 1 991 , p. A1 . His
exact words:
When we win, and we will, we will have taught a dangerous dictator, and any tyrant
tempted to follow in his footsteps, that the U.S. has a new credibility, and that what
we say goes.
106. On the likelihood of India's population overtaking China's, see for example,
Barbara Crossette, "Population Policy In Asia Is Faulted," New York Times, September
1 6, 1 992, p. A9. An excerpt:
India, with a population of about 882 million that is growing 2.1 percent a year, is likely
to overtake China as the most populous country by 2035. . . . India's population may
reach 2 billion before leveling off. China, with about 1.165 billion people, is likely to
stabilize at about 1 .5 billion. . . . The world's population is estimated at 5.4 billion.
1 07. On U.S. leaders' dislike of Nehru and Indian independence, see for example,
Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and
Pakistan, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 62-64, 88-89, 222-225
(discussing high U.S. officials' dislike of Indian independence and quoting their remarks
that Nehru was a "spoiled child," "vain and immature," "a hypersensitive egoist,"
motivated by "terrible resentment" of "domination by whites," "intellectually arrogant and
of course at the same time suffering from an inferiority complex . . . schizophrenia," and
that "Indians are notably prone to blame others for their problems, as the British know all
too well," and Indian "ingratitude" is due to "a sense of Divine right" that is "a sort of
natural attribute of Indians").
1 08. For declassified documents revealing U.S. planners' fear of China's
developmental success, see for example, Department of Defense, United States-
Vietnam Relations, 1945-67, Draft revision of N.S.C. 5429/5, June 29, 1959,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1 971 , Book 1 0. An excerpt (pp. 1 1 98,
1213,1226,1208):
A fundamental source of danger we face in the Far East derives from Communist
China's rate of economic growth which will probably continue to outstrip that of free
Asian countries, with the possible exception of Japan. In view of both the real and
the psychological impact of Communist China's growth and the major effort of the
Soviet Union to gain influence in the less developed countries with aid and promises
of quick progress under Communism, increased emphasis must be placed upon
economic growth of the free Far East countries. . . .
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 82
The dramatic economic improvements realized by Communist China over the
past ten years impress the nations of the region greatly and offer a serious challenge
to the Free World. . . . [The United States should do what it can] to avoid enhancing
the prestige and power of Asian Communist regimes and ... to retard, within the
limits of our capabilities, the economic progress of these regimes.
Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on
Vietnam, Senator Gravel Edition, Boston: Beacon, 1972, Vol. Ill, p. 218. An excerpt:
Chinese political and ideological aggressiveness . . . [are] a threat to the ability of
these peoples [i.e. other Asian countries] to determine their own futures, and hence to
develop along ways compatible with U.S. interests.
On the U.S. policy to support India as a counterbalance to China, see for example,
National Security Council [N.S.C.] Memorandum 5701 , "Statement of Policy On U.S.
Policy Toward South Asia," January 1 0, 1 957, Foreign Relations of the United States,
1955-1957, Vol. VIII ("South Asia"), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987,
pp. 29-43. An excerpt (pp. 31 , 35-36):
The outcome of the competition between Communist China and India as to which can
best satisfy the aspirations of peoples for economic improvement, will have a
profound effect throughout Asia and Africa. Similarly, the relative advantages to be
derived from economic cooperation with the Soviet bloc or the West will be closely
watched. . . . The political stake of the United States in the independence and
integrity of the countries of South Asia, as well as in their stability and peaceful
progress, is very large. If India or Pakistan came under Communist influence, chain
reaction effects, going as far as Western Europe, would result. ... A strong India
would be a successful example of an alternative to Communism in an Asian context.
... It is in our interest that India should substantially achieve the broad aims of the
five-year [economic development] plan, in terms of increases in output and
employment, and should continue to make an effective assault upon its development
problems.
Dennis Merrill, Bread and the Ballot: The United States and India's Economic
Development, 1947-1963, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992,
especially chs. 6 and 7, pp. 1 39-1 40 (analysis of U.S. policy during the Eisenhower and
Kennedy years, remarking that by the 1 950s U.S. planners feared that China seemingly
"had hit upon a formula for rapid development that might prove attractive throughout
Asia, the Near East, and Africa"). An excerpt (pp. 146-147):
In the United States Senate, [Senator] John F. Kennedy . . . spoke with
characteristic vigor of the race between India and China for economic progress and
asserted: "A successful Indian program is important at least as much for the example
it can set for the economic future of other underdeveloped countries as for its own
sake. . . . India, like the United States, is engaged in a struggle of coexistence ~ in
its case with China, which is also pursuing a planning effort being put under
consideration all over the world. . . ."
In terms almost identical to [Kennedy]'s, Vice-President Nixon also supported
India aid: "In my own mind what happens in India, insofar as its economic progress is
concerned in the next few years, could be as important or could be even more
important in the long run, than what happens in the negotiations with regard to Berlin. .
. . There are two great peoples in Asia. The peoples who live under the Communist
government of China, and the people of India. . . . What happens in India will have a
tremendous impact on the decisions made in other countries in Asia, in the Near
East, in Africa and even in the Americas."
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 83
See also, Walt Rostow with Richard W. Hatch, An American Policy in Asia, New York:
Technology Press/M.l.T. and John Wiley, 1 955, pp. 6, 37, 51 .
On the "threat of a good example" as a general theme of U.S. foreign policy, see
especially footnote 32 of this chapter, and also its footnotes 7, 8 and 68; chapter 1 of
U.P. and its footnote 20; and the text of chapter 2 of U.P. (on Sandinista Nicaragua).
1 09. On the debate over sending food aid to India during its famine, see for
example, Dennis Merrill, Bread and the Ballot: The United States and India's Economic
Development, 1947-1963, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992, pp. 61-
74, 146-170 (reviewing the protracted discussions within the U.S. government
concerning sending wheat to India during its 1 950-1 951 famine, ultimately carried out in
June 1951 by means of a loan to India repayable in strategic materials). An excerpt (pp.
62, 65, 69-70, 73):
[W]ith hundreds of deaths due to starvation already documented, American
officials generally acknowledged that India was experiencing the first stage of a very
real famine. If the United States did not provide assistance, Indian officials estimated
that ten to thirteen million of their countrymen would perish. The Truman
administration was also aware that the United States Commodity Credit Corporation
held approximately 319 million bushels of surplus wheat in reserve and that a 2-
million-ton shipment to India would require only 75 million bushels. In short, India's
need was well known, the crisis was extraordinarily urgent, and the United States
was in a strong position to help. . . .
On the one hand, George McGhee's N.E.A. [Office of Near Eastern Affairs] eyed
the political benefits to be reaped by a prompt and positive response. ... On the
other hand, the Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Budget voiced
reservations over the cost of assisting India. . . . While Acheson [U.S. Secretary of
State] and McGhee had not categorically made food aid contingent upon a
reorientation of Indian policy, the linkages were obvious. ... By early April 1951, five
months had passed since the Indian government had first asked for assistance. No
reliable statistics exist on how many additional, famine-related deaths occurred
during this period. . . . During 1950 and 1951, as millions of Indians struggled each
day to survive on as little as nine ounces of foodgrains, American policy makers
sought to work India's distress to America's advantage.
110. For the New York Times's articles, see for example, J. Anthony Lukas, "Mrs.
Gandhi and the Left: Criticism by Menon Reflects Her Drift to Pragmatism," New York
Times, April 29, 1966, p. 6. An excerpt:
The Government [of India] has granted easy terms to private foreign investors in
the fertilizer industry, is thinking about decontrolling several more industries and is
ready to liberalize import policy if it gets sufficient foreign aid. . . . Much of what is
happening now is a result of steady pressure from the United States and the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. . . . The United States
pressure, in particular, has been highly effective here because the United States
provides by far the largest part of the foreign exchange needed to finance India's
development and keep the wheels of industry turning.
Call them "strings," call them "conditions" or whatever one likes, India has little
choice now but to agree to many of the terms that the United States, through the
World Bank, is putting on its aid. For India simply has nowhere else to turn.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 84
J. Anthony Lukas, "Mrs. Gandhi Denies She Is Shedding Socialism: Prime Minister Calls
Charge of Yielding to West Absurd," New York Times, April 25, 1 966, p. 8; J. Anthony
Lukas, "India and U.S. Concern Sign Fertilizer Plant Pact," New York Times, May 15,
1966, section 1, p. 18.
See also, David K. Willis, "Indo-U.S. relations strained by political complexities,"
Christian Science Monitor, November 26, 1 966, p. 5. An excerpt:
[T]he White House does not consider that New Delhi is doing nearly enough to
attract foreign capital to build private chemical fertilizer plants -- the sine qua non of
better food production. So the President is holding up approval of the two million tons
of grain India says it must have by the end of the year. . . .
For their part, Indian officials here and in New Delhi do not hide their near-
exasperation with Washington. "We have done everything we can to attract foreign
capital for fertilizer plants," they say in effect. "But the American and other Western
private companies know we are over a barrel, so they demand stringent terms. We
just cannot meet them. Meanwhile, if the two million tons promised us months ago is
not loaded soon, there will be a gap in the pipeline of food aid, and the consequences
will be very bad indeed."
111. For Chomsky's friend's article in the Israeli press, see Tanya Reinhart,
Ha'aretz (Israel), May 27, 1 994.
On the Oslo Agreements and their background, see for example, Edward W. Said,
"Arafat's Deal," Nation, September 20, 1993, p. 269 (immediate and perceptive
interpretation); Edward W. Said, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, New
York: Pantheon, 2000; Nicholas Guyatt, The Absence of Peace: Understanding the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, London: Zed, 1998, especially chs. 2 to 6; Naseer Hasan
Aruri, The Obstruction of Peace: the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, Monroe,
ME: Common Courage, 1 995; Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies: Jews and Arabs in a
Shared Land, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995; Donald Neff, Fallen Pillars:
U.S. Policy Towards Palestine and Israel Since 1945, Washington: Institute for Palestine
Studies, 1 995; Sara M. Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development,
Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995; Edward W. Said, Peace and its
Discontents: Gaza-Jericho 1993-1995, London: Vintage, 1995; Graham Usher, Palestine
in Crisis: The Struggle for Peace and Political Independence After Oslo, London: Pluto,
1995; Norman G. Finkelstein, "Securing Occupation: The Real Meaning of the Wye
River Memorandum," New Left Review, November/December 1998, pp. 128-139;
Naseer H. Aruri, "The Wye Memorandum: Netanyahu's Oslo and Unreciprocal
Reciprocity," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2, Winter 1999, pp. 17-28.
Chomsky summarizes {World Orders Old and New, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994, p. 249):
Throughout [the two decades until the Gulf War], there was general agreement
(including the P.L.O. from the mid-70s) that a settlement should be based on U.N.
242 (and 338, which endorses 242). There were two basic points of contention: (1)
Do we interpret the withdrawal clause of 242 in accord with the international
consensus (including the United States, pre-1971), or in accord with the position of
Israel and U.S policy from 1971? (2) Is the settlement based solely on U.N. 242,
which offers nothing to the Palestinians, or 242 and other relevant U.N. resolutions,
as the P.L.O. had long proposed in accord with the nonrejectionist international
consensus? Thus, does the settlement incorporate the Palestinian right to national
self-determination repeatedly endorsed by the U.N. (though blocked by Washington),
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 85
or the right of refugees to return and compensation, as the U.N. has insisted since
1948 (with U.S. endorsement, long forgotten)? These are the crucial issues that
stood in the way of a political settlement.
On both major issues under dispute, (1) and (2), the [Oslo] agreement explicitly
and without equivocation adopts the U.S. -Israeli stand. Article I, outlining the "Aim of
the Negotiations," specifies that "the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to
the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338"; nothing further is
mentioned. Note that this refers to the permanent status, the long-term end to be
achieved. Furthermore . . . U.N. 242 is to be understood in the terms unilaterally
imposed by the United States (from 1971), entailing only partial withdrawal [from the
Occupied Territories], as Washington determines. In fact, the agreement does not
even preclude further Israeli settlement in the large areas of the West Bank it has
taken over, or even new land takeovers. On such central matters as control of
water, it refers only to "cooperation in the management of water resources in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip" and "equitable utilization of joint water resources" in a
manner to be determined by "experts from both sides. . . ." The outcome of
cooperation between an elephant and a fly is not hard to predict.
112. On the United States blocking the Middle East Peace process for more than
twenty years before the Oslo Agreement, see chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnotes 41 , 47,
48, 49 and 56.
113. On Western European diplomatic support for Palestinian rights until the Gulf
War, see footnote 1 04 of this chapter.
114. For Israeli commentary using the term "neocolonialism," see for example,
Asher Davidi, Davar (Israel), February 17, 1993.
1 1 5. For blatant samples of the revival of imperialist outlook towards the Third
World, see for example, Paul Johnson, "Colonialism's Back -- and Not a Moment Too
Soon," New York Times Magazine, April 1 8, 1 993, section 6, p. 22. An excerpt:
We are witnessing today a revival of colonialism, albeit in a new form. It is a trend
that should be encouraged, it seems to me, on practical as well as moral grounds. . . .
[A]t precisely the time when colonies were deriving the maximum benefit from
European rule [in the 1960s], the decision was taken to liberate them forthwith. . . .
The trustees [which should be imposed to rule Third World countries] should not
plan to withdraw until they are reasonably certain that the return to independence will
be successful this time. So the mandate may last 50 years, or 100. . . . [S]ome
states are not yet fit to govern themselves. Their continued existence, and the
violence and human degradation they breed, is a threat to the stability of their
neighbors as well as an affront to our consciences. There is a moral issue here: the
civilized world has a mission to go out to these desperate places and govern. . . .
[T]he already overburdened United States will have to take the major responsibility,
though it can count on staunch support from Britain and, in this case, from France.
Labor and expense will be needed, as well as brains, leadership and infinite patience.
The only satisfaction will be the unspoken gratitude of millions of misgoverned or
ungoverned people who will find in this altruistic revival of colonialism the only way
out of their present intractable miseries.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 86
Angelo Codevilla [Hoover Institute, Stanford University], "Counterpoint: The U.S. Leads
Operation Wrong Target," Wall Street Journal, January 7, 1993, p. A15. An excerpt:
Our only realistic choice in Somalia and in all too many similar places is either to
leave them to their misery or to re-establish something very much like colonialism. . .
. Colonialism is an act of generosity and idealism of which only rising civilizations are
capable. . . . [C]olonialism is about dictating political outcomes of which we can be
proud.
Peregrine Worsthorne, "What kind of people?," Sunday Telegraph (London), September
17, 1990, p. 20. An excerpt:
Obviously we [i.e. Britain] can no longer be the world's policeman on our own as
we were when we put down the slave trade. But that does not at all mean that we
cannot give invaluable help to America in this role. What is more, the job would
enable us to put to good use the skills and experience which history has bestowed
upon us.
Critics rightly point out that we are no match for Germany and Japan when it
comes to wealth creation; or even for France and Italy. But when it comes to
shouldering world responsibilities we are more than a match. We are what we are.
Other countries are what they are. No doubt Britain's gentlemanly high culture and
its so-much-mocked and deplored anti-industrial education system have militated
against our being top of the productivity league. But perhaps now that is just as well,
since in the post-cold-war world there is a new job to be done that desperately needs
a major European country with a rather different kind of genius. That job is to help
build and sustain a new world order stable enough to allow the advanced economies
of the world to function without constant interruption and threat from the Third World.
Anybody who supposes that the United Nations, which is largely made up of the
Third World, can be relied upon to sustain such a world order for long must be naive.
Once lost, the habit and taste for the exercise of power are not so easily
regained. Britain has lost that taste less than most. Or rather a significant section of
it, among all classes, has not lost that taste. For a time it looked as if this might be a
liability, rendering us ill-suited to fit comfortably into a world where the wealth creators
were king. But it is not quite going to be that kind of world. It is going to be the kind of
world where the wealth creators will be desperate for protection. Refusing to adapt,
as Britain is accused of doing, can sometimes pay off, since the wheel of fashion
comes full circle. Possibly Britain was in danger of clinging too long to outmoded
imperial values. Thank God she did. For the civilised world will soon need them
again as never before.
R.W. Apple Jr., "Mission To Haiti: In Perspective," New York Times, September 20,
1994, p. A12. An excerpt:
Like the French in the 19th century, like the Marines who occupied Haiti from
1915 to 1934, the American forces who are trying to impose a new order will confront
a complex and violent society with no history of democracy. ... For two centuries,
political opponents in Haiti have routinely slaughtered each other. Backers of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide [sic], followers of General Cedras and the former
Tontons Macoute retain their homicidal tendencies, to say nothing of their weapons. .
Whether Mr. Clinton's decision to use American troops in Haiti and President
Carter's peacekeeping mission have opened the way for real change, or simply
inaugurated another futile effort to reshape a society that has long resisted reform,
may not be known for years.
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 87
Chomsky comments about Apple's account of the lessons of history in the previous
article ("Democracy Restored?," Z Magazine, November 1994, pp. 49-61 at p. 58):
One takes for granted that the vicious terror and racism of the Wilson administration
and its successors will be transmuted to sweet charity as it reaches the educated
classes, but it is a novelty to see Napoleon's invasion, one of the most hideous
crimes of an era not known for its gentleness, portrayed in the same light. We might
understand this as another small contribution to the broader project of revising the
history of Western colonialism so as to justify the next phase.
He adds {Rethinking Camelot: J.F.K., the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture,
Boston: South End, 1 993, p. 45): "States are not moral agents; those who attribute to
them ideals and principles merely mislead themselves and others."
Understanding Power: Chapter Five Footnotes -- 88
Chapter Six
Community Activists
1 . On the scale of the working-class media early in the twentieth century, see for
example, Jon Bekken, "The Working-Class Press at the Turn of the Century," in William
S. Solomon and Robert W. McChesney, eds., Ruthless Criticism: New Perspectives in
U.S. Communication History, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp.
1 51 -1 75. An excerpt (pp. 1 58, 1 51 , 1 59, 1 60, 1 62, 1 57):
Total circulation [of the U.S. socialist press] exceeded two million copies before
World War I, with the Appeal to Reason -- far and away the circulation leader --
boasting a weekly circulation of 761 ,747. . . .
At the turn of the century, the U.S. labor movement published hundreds of
newspapers in dozens of languages, ranging from local and regional dailies issued by
working-class political organizations and mutual aid societies to national union
weeklies and monthlies. These newspapers practiced a journalism very different
from that of the capitalist newspapers. . . . Their newspapers were an integral part of
working-class communities, not only reporting the news of the day or week, but
offering a venue where readers could debate political, economic and cultural issues.
Readers could follow the activities of working-class institutions in every field and
could be mobilized to support efforts to transform economic and political conditions. .
. . Labor newspapers ranged from small, irregularly issued sheets to twelve- to
sixteen-page dailies that were as large, and in many ways as professional, as many
of the capitalist newspapers with which they co-existed. . . . [W]orkers did not
passively accept their lot. Rather, they built a rich array of ethnic, community,
workplace and political organizations that helped them to survive from day to day . . .
vibrant working-class cultures organized along ethnic as well as class lines. . . .
To counter what they saw as a strong antilabor bias in the mainstream press, and
to secure access to unreported labor news, editors organized a cooperative news-
gathering service in November 1 91 9. With the support of labor, socialist, farm-labor,
and other papers, Federated Press bureaus in Washington, Chicago, and New York
dispatched daily releases, beginning in 1920. Federated Press began with 110
member papers, including 22 dailies. ... By 1925, two years after the A.F.L.
[American Federation of Labor, the most conservative segment of the U.S. labor
movement] denounced Federated Press as a vehicle for communist propaganda, the
Federated Press circulated its daily 5,000-word service to 150 papers and a
supplemental weekly labor letter to 1,000 subscribers. In addition to breaking labor
news, Federated Press provided in-depth articles on industrial and financial trends,
wage levels, and corporate profits. The service survived until 1 956, when it had 53
member papers and was one of four news services available to working-class
newspapers (the other three were tied to the A.F.L. or C.I.O. [Congress of Industrial
Organizations]). But union subscribers canceled the service after the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
merger and the resulting purge of left-wing unions, and Federated was forced from
the field.
J.B.S. Hardman and Maurice F. Neufeld, eds., The House of Labor: Internal Operations
of American Unions, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1951. An excerpt (p. 188):
Understanding Power: Chapter Six Footnotes -- 1
In 1949, Herbert Little, director of the Office of Information, U.S. Labor Department,
reported that that department had a mailing list of more than 800 labor periodicals. . . .
According to Mr. Little, "Their circulations have been estimated to total more than
20,000,000, possibly as high as 30,000,000. Eliminating obvious duplications, such
as the machinist who gets his union's weekly newspaper, its monthly journal and the
local labor papers, it is apparent that nearly all of the 16,000,000 labor unionists in this
country get and probably read one or more labor papers. If their families are taken
into consideration, the possible readership would be tripled.
See also chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 36.
2. Alternative Radio offers an extensive catalog of taped lectures and interviews by
many speakers including Noam Chomsky, and is a resource about community radio
generally (Box 551 , Boulder, CO, 80306, 1 -800-444-1 977). Radio Free Maine also
offers a catalog of taped lectures by Chomsky and others (P.O. Box 2705, Augusta, ME,
04338 (207) 622-6629). The Z Media Institute is involved in developing alternative
media of various kinds (1 8 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA, 02543, (508) 548-9063). The
Pacifica Network of major community-controlled radio stations includes KFCF (Fresno,
CA), KPFA (Berkeley, CA), KPFK (North Hollywood, CA), KPFT (Houston, TX), WBAI
(New York, NY), and WPSW (Washington, DC). In addition, many other communities of
all sizes have non-corporate and popularly-controlled radio.
Z Magazine -- which is discussed in the text of this chapter of U.P. and in chapter 9
of U.P. -- depends for its survival upon subscriptions (18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA,
02543, (508) 548-9063, www.zmag.org/znet.htm). Dollars and Sense is an excellent
bimonthly magazine providing "left" perspectives on current economic affairs and
exploring the workings of the U.S. and international economies (1 Summer Street,
Somerville, MA, 02143, (617) 628-841 1 , www.dollarsandsense.org). Extra! \s Fairness
and Accuracy In Reporting's useful bimonthly magazine of media criticism (F.A.I. R., 130
West 25th St., New York, NY, 1 0001 , 1 -800-847-3993, www.fair.org). The Nation is a
liberal weekly which often has interesting material (P.O. Box 37072, Boone, IA, 50037,
1-800-333-8536, www.thenation.com).
For some other popularly-oriented political organizations and publications, see the
resource guides at the end of: Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, Tucson, AZ:
Odonian, 1998; Noam Chomsky, Secrets, Lies and Democracy, Tucson, AZ: Odonian,
1 994; and Mark Achbar, ed., Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media,
Montreal: Black Rose, 1994; and see Project Censored, The Progressive Guide to
Alternative Media and Activism, New York: Seven Stories, 1 999. See also footnote 6 of
chapter 9 of U.P.
For extensive lists of links to the websites of progressive organizations and
information sources, see for example, www.zmag.org/znet.htm (includes a "progressive
internet resources directory"); www.fair.org/resources.html (includes alternative news
sources, media criticism and reviews); www.commondreams.org/community.htm (lists
scores of progressive and activist groups).
3. On 75 percent of the U.S. public supporting a nuclear freeze, see for example,
Daniel Yankelovich and John Doble, "The Public Mood: Nuclear Weapons and the
U.S.S.R.," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 63, Fall 1984, pp. 33-46 (reporting public opinion poll
findings).
Understanding Power: Chapter Six Footnotes -- 2
4. On Gorbachev's declaration of a unilateral nuclear test freeze, see for example,
Serge Schmemann, "Gorbachev Seeks To Talk To Reagan On Atom Test Ban," New
York Times, March 30, 1 986, p. 1 ("Moscow announced a halt of its testing program last
July, asking Washington to join in").
5. The response of some of the most prominent disarmament activists is illustrated
by a three-page funding letter sent out by the Institute for Defense & Disarmament
Studies in March 1985, signed by its director, Randall Forsberg, who deserves much of
the credit for the successes of the nuclear freeze campaign. Chomsky discusses and
quotes from this letter as follows (Turning the Tide: U.S. Interventionism in Central
America and the Struggle for Peace, Boston: South End, 1 985, p. 1 88):
The Institute, which "launched the nuclear freeze movement in 1980," accomplished
what it set out to do: it educated the public to support a nuclear freeze. But this
popular success did not lead to "a real electoral choice on the issue in 1 984." Why?
Because of "expert opposition to the freeze," which prevented Mondale [the
Democratic candidate] from taking a supportive position. The conclusion, then, is
that we must devote our efforts to "building expert support": convincing the experts.
This achieved, we will be able to move to a nuclear freeze.
6. Rosa Parks attended the Highlander Folk School's 1 955 School Desegregation
Workshop, and in December of that year began the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Tennessee officials shut down the Highlander School in 1962, after it had been attacked
by white segregationists and others as a "Communist training school." A new institution,
the Highlander Research and Education Center, was founded in its wake. Highlander
had been a meeting place for various Socialist and Communist associations, and its
founders "envisioned the rise of a radical coalition in support of an aggressive,
interracial movement of industrial workers and farmers in the South," although "neither
[its founder Myles] Horton nor any other faculty member ever took the final step and
joined the Communist party." See John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School,
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996, pp. 162-164, 54-55; Frank Adams,
Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander, Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair,
1975.
For a remarkable and inspiring book about Highlander and its founder, see Myles
Horton, The Long Haul: An Autobiography, New York: Teachers College Press, 1 998.
7. On the Joint Chiefs of Staff's fear of "civil disorder" in 1968, see chapter 1 of U.P.
and its footnote 77.
8. On the "Wise Men"'s mission, see for example, George C. Herring, America's
Longest War: 1950-1975, New York: Knopf, 1986, pp. 202-208. The author reviews
President Johnson's briefing with the "Wise Men" on March 26, 1 968, and the
"tremendous erosion of support" for the war among the nation's business and legal elite.
The "Wise Men" were Dean Acheson, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Douglas Dillon,
Cyrus Vance, Arthur Dean, John McCloy, Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway, Maxwell
Taylor, Robert Murphy, Henry Cabot Lodge, Abe Fortas, and Arthur Goldberg;
Presidential adviser Clark Clifford also was highly influential during the period. There is
additional discussion of the economic crisis of mid-March 1 968 in the 1 996 expanded
edition of Herring's book at pp. 220-227. See also footnote 77 of chapter 1 of U.P.
Understanding Power: Chapter Six Footnotes -- 3
9. On Thomas Jefferson's view of corporations, as well as his view of the effect of
economic inequality on democracy, see for example, John F. Manley, "American
Liberalism and the Democratic Dream: Transcending the American Dream," Policy
Studies Review, Vol. 1 0, No. 1 , Fall 1 990, pp. 89f. An excerpt (pp. 97-99):
Jefferson did not support capitalism; he supported independent production. . . .
The fundamental Jeffersonian proposition is that "widespread poverty and
concentrated wealth cannot exist side by side in a democracy." This proposition is
dismissed by liberals making peace with the rich and coming to terms with inequality,
but Jefferson perceived the basic contradictions between democracy and capitalism.
... In 1817 he complained that the banks' mania "is raising up a monied aristocracy
in our country which has already set the government at defiance. ..." A year earlier
he said he hoped the United States would reject the British example and "crush in it's
[sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge
our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. . . ."
Jefferson understood that Democracy was problematic. But the alternatives
were rule by the rich, or a despot. "I am not among those who fear the people," he
writes. "They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. . . .
[S]how me where the people have done half the mischief in these forty years, that a
single despot would have done in a single year. . . ." Jefferson reminds us that
democracy is impossible w 
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11